This includes:
We are proud that our brands help people express themselves and live a little more comfortably. And yet, we know there’s more we can do to advocate for environmental and social change in our communities, along our value chain, and for our employees.
The 2023 Comfort Report is our third annual progress update on our Purpose strategy, Corporate Responsibility, and Sustainability activation. Our reports seek to explain what Purpose means to Crocs, Inc. and summarize our progress in integrating our Purpose strategy throughout our operations.
“To create a more comfortable world for all, we must also consider environmental impact and the well-being of the global communities we interact with each step of the way.“ -Andrew Rees, CEO
Our ability to drive progress across our global ambitions requires strong oversight and accountability structures. To act on our Purpose strategy and remain accountable to our ambitions we have established the following four goals.
In staying true to our innovative spirt, we are shifting away from a reliance on fossil fuel-derived inputs to instead focus on using renewable, recycled materials to help make our shoes.
Since stating our enterprise goal in 2022, we completed our most comprehensive GHG inventory to date and identified available interventions for emissions reduction that address hotspot areas.
We are considering how to optimize both design and materials for lower emissions in our products, starting with our most popular styles.
100% of Tier 1 factories by 2023.100% of Tier 2 suppliers by 2024.
Our oversight structures help us gather insight into the aspects of our supply chain that we don’t directly control.
Building upon our guiding pillars of Comfort for The Planet, Comfort for Our Communities, and Comfort for All People, our long-term, intersectional strategy includes four key ambitions grounded in a foundation of responsibility and governance.
Crocs, Inc. will foster inclusive workplaces in which individuality is a path to opportunity for our workforce and a source of collective strength.
Everything we do starts with our people. We champion all one-of-a-kinds with our progressive people practices and are working hard to foster an inclusive workplace that reflects our efforts to be ‘delightfully democratic’ and ‘confidently comfortable.’
To be an employer of choice, we need to create spaces for our people to show up authentically, support one another fully, and bring their ideas to the table freely. For any of that to transpire, those spaces also have to be safe. That’s why our occupational safety practices are core to our inclusivity strategy. In 2023, our teams led major initiatives at each of our distribution centers to further embed best practices, rigorous evaluations, and crucial discussions to strengthen our safety management program. As a result, our safety rates, including TRIR, have improved year-over-year, and continue to remain lower than the industry average, as of the end of 2023.
Crocs, Inc. will champion circular models of production and consumption through more innovative product design and collaboration.
Through our circularity efforts we’ve demonstrated our willingness to be imaginative, think critically, and chase collaborative new ideas. Luckily, innovation has always been a core strength and we continue to tap into this innovative spirit in the way we design our shoes, source materials, and optimize end-of-life solutions. In the past few years, sourcing less emissions-intensive materials has emerged as a critical strategic opportunity and we've begun to see the impacts of scaling up our sourcing of bio-circular content within the Crocs brand. Since August 2023, we have exceeded a monthly average of 20% bio-circular content within our Croslite™️ compounds, achieving our internal milestone set out in 2022.
We’re now giving old Crocs shoes a chance at a new life through the launch of our retail takeback program. As part of the pilot, we placed dedicated collection boxes at participating retail locations that, once filled, were taken to our partners at Soles4Souls, who helped sort and determine the shoes’ next-best path to reuse. In 2024, we expanded this program to include over 150 U.S. retail stores and provided a mail-in option to make it easier to engage in the program from home.
Crocs, Inc. will work to mitigate our contribution to climate change and recalibrate our resource use.
The comfort of our communities, all people, and the planet continues to be threatened by climate change. That is why we continue to establish data-driven strategies to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and drive toward our reduction goals. For complex value chains, achieving ambitious targets is no easy feat, but we are taking on the challenge.
In 2023, we took a closer look at our path to ‘Net Zero by 2040’ goal and completed our most comprehensive assessment to date of the emissions reduction interventions available to us. This included examining ways to accelerate our use of bio-circular materials in our Croslite™️ compounds, reduce our reliance on highly emissive transportation modes for our products, and explore renewable energy solutions at our facilities.
Crocs, Inc. will address barriers to unlock opportunities for all communities to be safe, resilient, and thriving.
We believe that partnerships based on transparency, collaboration, and mutual respect are critical to our long-term success and, in turn, our ability to create shared value for our communities. We continue to take into account the local, regional, social and environmental realities that exist for our communities today, create policies that serve to protect our stakeholders, and help people throughout our global value chain unlock their potential.
In evaluating how we can create comfort for communities, we’ve found that the most authentic way for us to drive positive impact is by using our resources, platform, and capacity for connection to create the space for others to step up with agency and authenticity. To bring this to fruition, we are working with nonprofit partners to create pathways for people to unlock their potential, step up to greatness, and create measurable impact in their communities.
Crocs, Inc. will model good corporate stewardship, acknowledging that our license to operate includes responsible practices across our business and supply chain.
In order to determine whether the standards we’ve established for our operations and our supply chain are upheld and continuously improved, we’ve implemented feedback loops that allow us to assess our impact and continue to prioritize our efforts. These feedback loops take the form of auditing and compliance processes, ratings of our ESG disclosures from various agencies, and engagement sessions with employees at all levels of the organization. The learnings we uncover, our strong foundation of policies, and our oversight mechanisms continue to anchor our strategy.
Our oversight structures help us work hand-in-hand with our suppliers to develop and implement audit and compliance mechanisms, giving us insight into the aspects of our supply chain that we don't directly control. This work helps bring our supply chain standards to fruition, and advance efforts around transparency and traceability, environmental sustainability, and social and labor rights. We recently created two enterprise-wide, consumer-facing policies, in addition to our Factory and Supplier Code of Conduct, that help create standards that support the social and environmental well-being of the communities along our supply chain.
Effectively disclosing under appropriate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) frameworks helps stakeholders understand how we are managing impact-related risks and opportunities and also serves as a gut check for our Purpose strategy. Through reporting, we seek to transparently summarize our year-over-year progress on our stated ambitions.
*These indices are included within the body of the 2021 report.
1This goal is calculated on a per pair basis for the Crocs Classic Clog.
2All demographic data excludes individuals that chose not to disclose gender or race.
3This metric represents a combined TRIR for our Ohio distribution center (of 1.86), our Nevada distribution center (of 1.52), and our Netherlands distribution center (of 1.19) in 2023.
4This reflects the reduction from the 2021 baseline for our official Classic Clog carbon footprint reduction goal.
5This figure includes shoes donated through all Soles4Souls donation programs (including relief), but excludes shoes collected through the takeback program.
May 14, 2024
May 28, 2024
May 21, 2024
March 26, 2024