Emmy's Sustainability Report 2023

The Sustainability of Second Hand Business – What Does It Consist Of?

As interest in and knowledge about product sustainability grows, the need to understand the overall impact of operations becomes more pronounced. Emmy has a significant positive impact on its environment thanks to its circular economy business model and active advocacy work. However, there is always work to be done to minimize negative effects as well. We wanted to make Emmy’s overall impact visible, which is why the Sustainability Report for 2023 was created.

Circular Economy Is Key to Developing Industry Sustainability

The clothing industry is estimated to produce up to 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions, and textiles create the fourth largest pressure on virgin natural resources and water use.

Emmy’s goal is to make second hand a real alternative to new. Circularity in clothing helps tackle carbon dioxide emissions and improves the efficiency of raw material use.

The shift to a circular economy is essential for mitigating climate change. The world is currently only 8% circular, meaning the change is just beginning. That’s why societal advocacy to promote the circular economy and sustainability in the clothing industry is an important part of Emmy’s environmental responsibility. Driving change requires active dialogue with decision-makers, companies, and consumers.

The majority of a garment’s emissions are generated during production. Moderating consumption and extending the life of clothing are central to making consumption more sustainable. If each of us wore our clothes twice as long, the entire clothing industry’s emissions would drop by 44%.

Second hand clothing does not generate production emissions, but second hand business is not entirely emission-free: emissions are generated when clothes are transported to Emmy and between sellers and buyers.

Emmy’s Environmental Responsibility Work Happens on Three Levels:

• Accelerating the circular economy transition through societal advocacy
• Reducing emissions in the clothing industry and developing sustainability through second hand business and by offering partners the opportunity to participate in the circular economy
• Promoting circulation and reducing our own carbon footprint (e.g., logistics emissions and responsible packaging materials)

Accelerating the Circular Economy Transition Through Active Advocacy

Societal advocacy to promote the circular economy and sustainability in the clothing industry is an important part of Emmy’s environmental responsibility. Driving change requires Emmy to engage in active dialogue with decision-makers, companies, and consumers.

One of the highlights of 2023 was, among other things, the €30,000 grant awarded by Ålandsbanken’s Baltic Sea Project to support the development of our operations. The grant was awarded for digital technology developed by Emmy, which makes it easy for companies and organizations to get used clothes back on sale.

Partnerships are a key part of Emmy’s environmental responsibility work, as Emmy enables brands to become part of the circular economy. The Finnish brand Nanso was the first to test the technology with us in 2023. In this collaboration, the sale of second hand clothing is part of Nanso’s service path, and Emmy handles the sale of Nanso customers’ clothes.

Responsibility is also reflected internally in Emmy’s corporate culture. As a counteraction to the overconsumption celebration of Black Week, we carried out a responsibility statement with our staff in November 2023. We turned our frustration with overproduction, overconsumption, poor quality, and overly fast cycles into art. The result was a textile waste corpse containing 17 kg of textile waste—the same amount the average Finn produces in a year. The statement gained good visibility on social media, and our customers named the corpse Maire A. Jätevuori.

Promoting Circulation

Emmy does not manufacture anything itself, and therefore Emmy’s own operations do not generate textile waste. The second hand products sold at Emmy mainly come from private sellers.

In 2023, about 260,000 products arrived at Emmy’s warehouse, of which 210,000 were sold. Of all products received by Emmy

• 75% are put up for sale either in Emmy’s online store or the brick-and-mortar shop in Tampere

• 25% are rejected because they do not meet Emmy’s quality criteria. The most common reasons for rejection are the wrong brand or poor condition of the product.

During a six-month sales period, 85% of products find a new satisfied owner. The remaining 15% are forwarded for further circulation and charity.

The majority of products that do not meet Emmy’s quality criteria or whose sales period has ended are sent to the Recycling Center. All proceeds from the Recycling Center are used to support the company’s operations and goals, i.e., local environmental work and employment.

About 8,715 kg of textile waste, or an estimated 29,050 garments, are sent for further processing.

Increasing Understanding of the Environmental Impact of Second Hand

Emmy’s own operations have environmental impacts through the use of materials and logistics needed to serve customers.

Emmy sellers deliver their sales batches to us using their chosen delivery method, most often in reusable bags or cardboard boxes. We aim to reuse these as much as possible in our own operations, for example in the warehouse or for packing products for Emmy’s Tampere Sokos brick-and-mortar store. Some of the reusable bags are donated to charities, but those in poor condition go to mixed waste.

In 2023, Emmy sold a total of 210,000 products. Currently, orders are packed in bags made from recycled plastic or cardboard boxes, some of which are made from recycled material. We annually survey alternative packaging materials that are both responsible and durable.

In 2023, we gained more understanding of the positive environmental impacts of Emmy’s business, as Natalia Buchert from Laurea University of Applied Sciences completed a thesis as a responsibility development project in collaboration with Emmy. In her thesis, Buchert studied the environmental impacts of second hand clothing and customers’ views on the environmental aspects of used clothing.

According to Buchert’s calculations, Emmy together with its customers saved over 967 tons of CO2e emissions from clothing production in 2023, assuming these replaced new production. This amount corresponds to at least the annual carbon footprint of 93 Finns, which at the current level is 10,500 kg CO2e per person per year.

Second hand business is not entirely emission-free, as emissions are generated when clothes are transported to Emmy and between sellers and buyers. In 2024, our goal is to determine the emissions from our own operations with the help of our logistics partners.

Calculating emission data is by no means simple or unambiguous, and the figures reported by Emmy are also estimates of the emission impacts of second hand business. Therefore, it is also important to explain how the calculations were made.

Buchert began investigating the environmental impacts of second hand clothing by examining how much emissions clothing production causes. Clothing production emissions are often reported as kg/CO2e per kilogram of textile fiber. For this reason, Buchert started calculating emission figures by weighing clothes at Emmy’s Lohja warehouse and calculated the average weight for different categories.

The clothing categories were selected based on Emmy’s sales volumes: the 50 best-selling clothing categories were included. For the production emissions, she used this dataset of 50 clothing categories sold at Emmy, which included the fiber content of each category. Next, Buchert searched databases and scientific publications for the emission factors of 14 textile fibers.

The emission savings were calculated using the following logic, using a dress as an example:

• Weight 582.5 g
• 32% of the fibers are cotton, with an emission factor of 6 kg CO2e per kg of fiber, i.e., emissions of 1.106 kg CO2e
• 23% of the fibers are polyester, with an emission factor of 15.5 kg CO2e per kg of fiber, i.e., emissions of 2.036 kg CO2e

The other fiber shares of sold dresses were calculated using the same logic.

Thus, the estimated production emissions of a dress are a total of 5.53 kg CO2e.

A total of 26,763 dresses were sold at Emmy in 2023. If these dresses had been bought new, their production would have generated 148,047.56 kg CO2e in emissions. If we assume that buying these products second hand replaced new production, an equivalent amount of emission savings was achieved.

Similar calculations were made for all 50 best-selling clothing categories. The calculation covers a total of 179,489 products. The products are mainly second hand items from private sellers, but the calculation includes 1.8% new products from business sellers, as these were difficult to remove from the data.

Emmy does not have a direct way to influence the production volumes of new clothes. However, we can help brands turn to the circular economy by developing partnerships and offering the opportunity to build resale business alongside their current operations.

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Natalia Buchert’s thesis has been published in the Theseus database. Buchert’s work was awarded as the best business administration master’s thesis at Laurea University of Applied Sciences in December 2023. If you wish, you can read Buchert’s thesis via Theseus.