Viktoria Serreau joined ICIW as a management trainee in September 2020. Since the beginning of the year, she has been working exclusively on the company's sustainability work. ICANIWILL produces and sells training clothes, and the company was started in 2015 by Gustaf Ollas. During the spring, ZeroMission has made a climate calculation of ICIW's operations and products and purchased climate compensation corresponding to 100% of the company's emissions.

Why did you want to make a climate calculation?

Gustaf has had sustainability in mind since the start of the company, and from the beginning they thought about packaging and cooperation with producers. As the company grew, the work needed to be structured, and it felt like a natural first step to start counting emissions. Our goal was to get a handle on emissions to understand where in the chain we need to work to reduce our impact. Then, from the start, we also wanted to offset all the emissions we cause today. We see this as the entire foundation of our sustainability journey. Now we know how to formulate the future climate strategy, we can put the right structures in place and develop sharper procedures for the business.

Was there anything that surprised you when you received the results of the climate calculation?

Maybe not the biggest sources of emissions, but there were areas I hadn't even thought about. For example, commuting. Here we need to challenge employees in the future not to choose the car in the first place. So we've had a lot of new ideas. Another was IT and server use. We don't have a physical store, but we are online. Based on that, it became an essential area and something we want to look at in the future. Although of course the clothes have by far the biggest impact.

But even with the clothes, do you have new ideas?

We have released the first collection made of 100% recycled materials. It's timely, and it's been very popular.

How do you think about the problem of being a growing company, while at the same time we know that the climate impact of the business and products needs to be reduced. Isn't that contradictory?

It is difficult. We are growing rapidly, and will continue to grow. It is simply not possible to reduce emissions in absolute terms, compared to today, if we grow. But we want to 'grow sustainably' and reduce our emissions per product. If each product has half the emissions of today, we have expanded in a good way.

If we are to 'grow sustainably', we need access to good data. If we could communicate that our tights have emitted XX kg of CO2e, and that these can be compared to other brands, then this also needs to be an important issue for the consumer. But to even do that, we need more transparency in the clothing industry. Emissions back in the supply chain, including for Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers, but also the use phase is important for the cradle-to-grave impact of the garment. These are tricky questions, but we are determined to do our part to create more sustainable production and consumption.

Why did you choose to collaborate with ZeroMission?

Wow, I can hardly remember. But I did a lot of research and contacted a few different agencies. We found you through another client of yours. Then we got in touch, and why we chose to go with you was because we realized that we wanted to start counting, and then we wanted expert help. Then we wanted to carbon offset too, of course, and with ZeroMission we could make the whole journey, which felt just right.

Why carbon offsetting and how does it fit with future climate strategy?

We have climate impacts today, that's just a fact. We understand the situation and we are planning and making changes, but we still need to take care of emissions today. If we wait, our climate debt will grow, so we need to do both, reducing and offsetting at the same time.

Of course, it would have been better if we hadn't released anything at all, but that's not the case at the moment.

And now we have offset 100% of all emissions in Scolel'te project in Mexico!

Do you have any lessons learned from all the work you want to share with other businesses?

Start as early as possible. There is so much you do not know. It also takes time to develop templates and procedures and communicate what you want to achieve.

Where will the ICIW be in five years?

I envision a company that is at the forefront. Our focus will always be functional training wear, but we have reduced our emissions per product, we have control over the entire supply chain and we are at the forefront of the climate issue, compared to our competitors.

But so much has happened in the next 6 months that in 5 years, who knows!

It's messy at first, but if you find the right partner, it becomes much easier. And then it's actually not that hard!