People, Profit and Planet: Crystal International Group Shares Net Zero Vision 2050

Tianwei Zhang
4 min read

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Crystal International Group, one of the world’s largest fashion manufacturers, is committed to net zero emissions by 2050.

Andrew Lo, chief executive officer and executive director at the group, said the company embarked on its sustainability journey after its chairman, Kenneth Lo, watched Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

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“It painted quite a grim future for humanity. All of us agreed that we should do something for the planet. We aligned amongst the top team to achieve the triple bottom line goal, which is people, profit and the planet,” said Lo.

Under that ethos, the company has laid out a sustainability target every five years since 2004.

Now with the fourth edition, Lo said the group has reduced around 40 percent of its products’ carbon footprint, and 33 percent of its products’ freshwater footprint. More than 3 million trees have been planted as a result as well.

He noted that the company has also been running a successful female empowerment program, having trained more than 55,000 female workers in the period.

The next milestone after being recognized on the CDP climate change 2023 A list — the only Hong Kong-based company to have received that accolade — would be the Crystal Sustainability Vision 2030 plan, which will encompass eight impact areas across social and environmental goals, according to Lo.

“We’ve committed to net zero emissions by 2050. In 2022, we set an interim target of a 35 percent reduction in aggregate emissions by 2030. When we’re studying about these goals, we did a very long calculation about the feasibility,” he said.

Lo said the challenges lie in achieving the goals that were calculated based on projected growth by 2030, which in reality would represent 80 percent of current associated emissions since the company decided that any future business growth should come with zero emissions.

To meet that goal, Lo said the company has set out a group-wide decarbonization pathway.

“Our key strategy for carbon reduction, number one, is deploying renewable energy. We are going to be putting solar panels onto all factory roofs. We’ve already installed 14 megawatts and we’ll continue to install solar panels before 2030,” he said, adding that it is also switching from fossil fuels to more renewable sources like biomass.

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