Sri Lanka’s leading apparel manufacturing company Hirdaramani Group has launched its Sustainability Roadmap, ‘Future First’ – a unified and holistic sustainability plan with ambitious targets for 2025.
The roadmap collates and builds on several years of sustainability efforts and investments by the company. It takes stock of existing sustainability mechanisms, outlines the Group’s ethos and sets new goals for the company to achieve globally across all its facilities in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Ethiopia.
The roadmap is designed across four pillars of sustainability: conserving the environment, empowering associates, supporting communities and trusting in good choices. The roadmap takes into account local and international contexts, global apparel programmes on sustainability and is guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Future First initiatives are also aimed at supporting the Government’s climate change commitments made at the recently completed COP26 summit.
Nikhil Hirdaramani, Director, Hirdaramani Group, “Hirdaramani has always been a leader in sustainability, holding itself accountable to rigorous standards while championing better business practices. ‘Future first’ is a unified, global approach and sets new targets for our sustainability efforts. What sets it apart is that it takes on sustainability through a nuanced, multi-dimensional approach and was designed through extensive consultation with multiple stakeholders. Conservation is a key part of it but so is the empowerment of our employees, the supporting of communities and building trust throughout the supply chain.”
The Group has already achieved net-zero for greenhouse gas emissions from energy across all its manufacturing operations in Sri Lanka and launched rooftop solar projects in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The Group is also investing in new technology and reporting standards for greater transparency and accountability, setting the sustainability bar higher for itself.
Demith Gooneratne, Senior Manager, Environmental Sustainability of the company said, “It is clear that existing ways of doing business must change. There is a growing call for organisations to hold themselves accountable in issues of sustainability and we are proud to have always led the way. ‘Future First’ is a unified roadmap that builds on and is developed from decades-long sustainability efforts at Hirdaramani and is cognizant of changing local and global conditions, especially given the pandemic and environmental and social developments in recent years.”
