Embracing our responsibility
CEO message
August 2009
Doing what’s right. At Gap Inc., it’s more than words on paper. It’s how we’ve approached our business ever since the first Gap store opened its doors 40 years ago.
From our inception, our founder Don Fisher urged us to make a difference “beyond just selling clothes.”
This legacy and passion shapes the actions of our 134,000 employees. As I travel around the world to our stores and the factories where our products are made, there’s a sense of pride in knowing that we take our commitment to social responsibility seriously.
Yet we know there is still more work ahead of us.
This report — our first completely online — details the progress we’ve made in 2007 and 2008. You’ll find the details and transparency you’ve come to expect from us about our global operations and a monitoring system that enabled us to inspect 99 percent of the factories that produced our clothes last year. Along the way, we’ve strived to address many topics head-on, including the incidence of child labor at an unauthorized vendor two years ago.
Our update on our environmental efforts is more expansive and describes work underway at each of our brands to make products in a more sustainable manner. Across our facilities, distribution centers and stores, we’ve also made progress in reducing our energy usage that helped us cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from 2003 to 2008.
We produced more than 70 million jeans last year. We also instituted a clean water initiative over the last few years that requires the facilities that launder our denim products to treat run-off water so that it is safe and clean for local communities. In fact, as part of Gap brand’s new denim launch this fall, we’ve imprinted information about this program on the inside pockets of each pair of jeans to drive customer awareness.
Another achievement during this time was the creation of the Gap Inc. P.A.C.E. program – Personal Advancement, Career Enhancement – providing life and workplace skills to female garment workers in the developing world.
Of course, achieving change of any magnitude requires other retailers and the industry to take these issues seriously as well, and we value the role social advocacy groups play in furthering this debate. We remain committed to driving greater accountability and transparency across all industries by supporting the 10 universal principles of the United Nations Global Compact.
I hope this report gives you a sense of how working in a responsible way is how we were founded, how we operate today and how we’ll do business in the future.
Thank you for taking the time to learn more about the issues we care deeply about.
Sincerely,
Glenn Murphy
