Graz, January 2024. legero united, mother company of the shoe brands superfit, legero and Think!, has set itself the goal of being CO2-neutral by 2030. For many years now, the Austrian manufacturer has placed a comprehensive strategic focus on the sustainability of its collections. It‘s consistently driven forward with a variety of measures along the entire value chain. In 2023, the company made significant progress towards CO2 neutrality.
In 2023, legero united reduced its CO2 emissions by five per cent. For the spring/summer 2024 collections of superfit and legero almost two thousand tonnes of CO2 were saved compared to the previous season. Gas consumption was reduced by sixty per cent, electricity consumption by eleven per cent and waste generation by seven per cent compared to previous year. The ambitious measures for sustainable production have also been recognised by experts: legero united received a German Innovation Award in 2023 and an eAward for its proprietry eco-database. The company has also received a total of twenty-four certifications – from EMAS and ISO14001 to SA8000 for its sites as well as the Blue Angel or the Austrian Ecolabel for a total of seventeen shoe models. “These accolades are an incentive for us to continue to consistently implement our sustainability initiatives,” says Julia Knapitsch, Director People, Finance and Communications at legero united.
Sustainability as a fundamental attitude
legero united designs the collections for its superfit, legero and Think! brands itself and manufactures most of them in its own production facilities. “This depth of our value chain guarantees maximum transparency and quality assurance,” confirms Julia Knapitsch. The company pursues its ambitious sustainability goals in the legero united sustainability agenda, or luna for short. For example, the company’s own development platform for sustainable materials, VIOS, which was established in 2013. With the VIOS Restricted Substance List, it sets far higher limit requirements than legislation or quality labels do. Or participation in numerous industry and environmental protection initiatives. First and foremost the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi), which the company signed up to in 2021. It offers companies a science-based methodology for defining CO2 targets that are in line with the Paris Agreement. With its proprietry eco-database, legero united has also developed a unique tool that shows the environmental performance of each of the more than 3,500 articles produced annually at product level. The CO2 footprint of a shoe is calculated as early as the design phase in order to control and reduce it in a targeted manner – and thus contribute to climate protection.