3 Questions for
Hilke Patzwall | Vaude
Hilke Patzwall, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager, Vaude
What is your experience with the Green Button so far?
The Green Button is an important certification for VAUDE that confirms our high level of implementation of environmental and social standards in the supply chain. It offers our customers additional assurance that the VAUDE brand and VAUDE products credibly meet these requirements.
You decided early on to test according to the stricter standard - why?
From the very beginning, it was planned that the Green Button would evolve professionally and methodically, and this has happened as planned with the Green Button 2.0 after the extensive consultation process with various interest groups. Since VAUDE had to do recertification after three years, it was clear to us that we would immediately face up to the increased requirements of the further developed Green Button. We continue to expect a benefit in credibility from this, especially for the fulfillment of corporate due diligence obligations.
What do you have to look out for when going through the process of evaluation?
For the preparation, it has proven useful at VAUDE that we had already prepared a careful risk analysis based on the OECD sector risks for the textile industry. Suitable measures can then be derived from this. We defined various indicators for measuring the impact of these measures. One learning experience from the Green Button recertification is for us to bring these indicators together even more clearly, also for communication in the VAUDE Sustainability Report.