Environmental profit and loss accounting: how luxury group that includes Gucci, Saint Laurent audits for sustainability
Marie-Claire Daveu, chief sustainability officer at French group Kering, explains how it puts a monetary value on the environmental impacts of its processes and those of it suppliers, and works with them to reduce harm to the environment
In fashion, there are people who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. That’s certainly not the case with Marie-Claire Daveu.
The chief sustainability officer and head of international institutional affairs at Kering, a global luxury goods group whose labels include Gucci, Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta, was in Hong Kong last month to launch a report outlining the challenges posed by climate change, new technologies and economic inequality on the luxury sector. Before this, she visited Shanghai to meet with start-ups, charities and various experts to talk about sustainability practises while staying at one of the city’s first ever “green” hotels.
“I’m very pragmatic. If I join a company it is to see the results, not to just write strategy or policy. For me it is integral that the targets we set become a reality. If we can achieve this, it will be a strong foundation for change,” she says.
Born in Brittany, northwest France, Daveu graduated from the Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environmental Studies and later studied public administration. She embarked on a career in sustainable development before moving to the public sector, where she took on roles in agriculture and the environment, advising the likes of former French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
A growing desire to work with a global company and be “more linked to the ground” inspired her to join Kering in 2012 after meeting with the group’s CEO Francois-Henri Pinault. By this point the company had already expressed a commitment to incorporate social responsibility and sustainability across its entire business. Daveu’s job, however, was to turn this vision into a reality.