Levi Strauss & Co. is the birthplace of the first pair of jeans.Read More
Levi Strauss & Co. is the birthplace of the first pair of jeans.
Read More
Design
The design phase of our process offers huge potential to reduce our impact in other areas.
We view both our design process and our business models as powerful opportunities to advance sustainability performance throughout the life cycle of our products, from the choice of materials to manufacturing to consideration of how the garments will be used and reused.
That means thinking from the outset about how we can dramatically reduce our use of natural resources, increase adoption of alternatives to virgin raw materials and strive to “close the loop” with an eye towards fully circular products and a truly circular economy. And it means always remembering who and what our products are for – people who want stylish, durable, practical and sustainable garments that are intentionally designed to exist in our world and encourage authentic self-expression.
Processes and Partnerships for Progress
Water<Less®
We launched Water<Less® in 2011 to shift how decisions are made in the design process and help reduce the amount of water used in the finishing process. Since then, we have saved more than 3.5 billion liters of water in the manufacturing of our products and helped suppliers recycle and reuse nearly 6 billion liters. As of the end of 2019, some 69 percent of Levi’s® were made Water<Less®, as were nearly 50 percent of Dockers® and 81 percent of our Signature and Denizen brands; we expect all of those numbers to keep climbing going forward. We have also open sourced the technology so others can use it to save water in their products as well. In coming years, in accordance with our 2025 Water Action Strategy, Water<Less® will also signify products or materials made in factories or mills that meet our context-based water use targets. Shop Water<Less®.
Levi’s® Wellthread™Launched in 2015, Wellthread™ garments are crafted with sustainability as the top priority at every step of the design and manufacturing process. Serving as a R&D laboratory for sustainable design innovation, Wellthread™ has generated a series of pioneering material breakthroughs. These have included “cottonized hemp” (see “source” section); single-fiber nylon board shorts and jackets designed to be 100 percent recyclable where the necessary technology exists; and, most recently, Levi’s® Wellthread™ jeans made with 40 percent Circulose®, a man-made cellulosic fiber created by re:newcell consisting of recycled denim and sustainably-sourced viscose, then blended with organic cotton into jeans that are themselves recyclable. As we drive the effort to make our company and our industry more sustainable and more circular, Wellthread™ will contine to lead the way. Learn more here.
Project JacquardWe released Jacquard™ 2.0 in 2019, augmenting the capabilities of the connected Trucker jacket first launched a year earlier with Google with added functionality in the classic Trucker design. Because the jacket updates its software automatically, it obviates the need for a new garment, new gadgets or wires, or any additional natural resource use, demonstrating that cutting edge garments can still be built to last. Learn more here.
