The OVS Sustainability Report, the result of years of collaboration of Nativa with the group, comes in first place in the Sustainability Report Award created by Corriere della Sera and Bologna Business School.
The fashion industry is complicated on a sustainability standpoint because the impacts of this industry are enormous: it is estimated to produce 10% of total CO2 emissions and 20% of wastewater globally as well as a significant portion of microplastics dispersed into the oceans. These are not only environmental problems, but also risks related to the people who make up the supply chain, still very manual, located in countries where sometimes the regulation of working conditions are still lacking.
For these reasons, however, the fashion industry has an important potential for positive impact and can contribute significantly to improving the environmental, economic and welfare conditions of people along the supply chain.
Nativa’s collaboration with OVS began in 2015 with the implementation of the sustainability strategy: starting with product and material improvements, primarily cotton – now 100% organic recycled or purchased through the Better Cotton Initiative, a promoter of better standards in cotton cultivation and practices.
In order to make the strategy integrated and shared, all employees have been trained in the direction taken by OVS. In addition, the commitment of the heads of the various functions to the sustainability objectives has been made official.
Another key element of the collaboration concerns the writing of the Sustainability Report. Transparency and the ability to effectively communicate its performance to all stakeholders is an integral part of the path taken by OVS. With the Sustainability Report 2020, for which we, as Nativa, took care of the contents and the communication project, OVS won the Sustainability Report Award created by Corriere della Sera and Bologna Business School.
In this project the joint objective of Nativa and OVS was to use the Report to enhance the past and future path of the company in terms of sustainability– highlighting the main outcomes, the long-term results- and to engage all stakeholders, through a process that has made more agile and participatory commitment of the resources involved.
We started with moments of deep immersion that allowed us to collect feedback from each corporate function, creating a narrative focused on the value created with respect to the four pillars of sustainability of OVS (Products and Supply Chain, People, Stores and Headquarters, Customers), thanks to the identification of impact indicators with respect to each pillar that form the heart of the document.
In addition to enhancing the sustainability strategy of OVS, according to the CEO Stefano Beraldo, we have worked to realize the Report, which is traditionally linked to an institutional type of communication, relevant from an artistic and creative point of view. The Report is easy to read thanks to the typical layout of editorial products and in all paragraphs it is possible to find stories and food for thought. In this way the Report no longer takes on the appearance of an arid instrument aimed at satisfying precise regulatory requirements, but a way of communicating one’s own sustainability strategy in an open, transparent and interesting way.
For OVS, sustainability is not just a company project, but an integral part of the business strategy which is based on the commitment of each company function to consider the environmental and social impacts that are inevitably generated by the actions and activities of the Group. The Sustainability Report 2020 represents a further tool to communicate the strategy by combining the story of the company’s journey with the transparent reporting of the actions implemented to meet the economic, environmental and social challenges to be faced in the future. An aspect awarded by Corriere della Sera and Bologna Business School.