Mondottica sustainability journey

Find out what actions Mondottica are taking to make the fashion eyewear business more stainable. 

What made you start the journey to greater sustainability?

As a global fashion eyewear business committed to designing and making beautiful products, we have the responsibility to ensure good business practice, and take actions that promote positive impact and reduce any negative impacts of our operations on people and planet.

Sustainability to Mondottica means doing good business, whether that be through ensuring great working experiences for all our employees, creating a diverse and inclusive culture, through to having policies and procedures that prevent any form of malpractice and increasingly in consideration of our environmental impact.

We have been taking many steps for a significant time to promote and achieve good and sustainable business practices for both corporate sustainability and the environment. Our efforts to greater environmental sustainability have really accelerated this year. We wanted to take greater leadership of our journey, to begin to influence the industry and make the biggest impact we can collectively in collaboration with our partners, such as brands, suppliers and optical retailers. Taking this initiative allows us to create positive change for the future, both within the eyewear industry and for society.

What were your first steps?

Our first steps on environmental sustainability were taken some time ago. These efforts have largely been localised around certain teams and certain parts of our operations, to identify more sustainable packaging, to recycle all our cardboard, and to work with energy efficient suppliers.

The difference this year being our commitment to take a holistic view of all our operations, set some bigger goals, and have become members of the United Nations Global Compact. Our recent membership to the UN Global Compact allows us to actively report on our progress and align with the applicable broader UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our voice is now on a global platform along with over 14,000 companies based in over 160 countries and 70 Local Networks, making us part of a bigger mechanism for sustainability.

What challenges have you faced?

We are very clear, that we must take credible actions to prevent greenwashing and understand the full implications of any decisions we make, both positive and negative. This has been a challenge as a business to get to grips with, considering the large volume of available data, resources, and initiatives that exist around environmental sustainability, and to clarify what works for us as a company.

A difficulty with actions and pledges around environmental sustainability, is that it can all be too easy to make grand commitments for the long-term future that are unachievable. We have been diligent and conscious to avoid making impractical and empty gestures to ensure that is not the case.

What has worked really well?

Our work this year has involved identifying employees who are committed and passionate about sustainability and welcoming these creative voices from each of our departments. This internal body is now focusing on the work we can tangibly achieve within the next 18 months.

By creating targeted actions and goals, for the medium term, within key areas of Product, People, Energy, Partnerships and Packaging/POS, this means we have a clear roadmap to deliver improvements. This has built momentum across all areas of the business with key employee involvement across departments.

With these initiatives, we are also now starting to join the dots with our global operations and third-party partners to ensure we can be better together.

What do you plan to do next to become even more sustainable?

Following our recent membership, and as a participant in the United Nations Global Compact and the UN Global Compact Network UK, Mondottica is committed to aligning strategies and operations with universal principles on human rights, labour, environment, anti-corruption and take actions that advance sustainability and societal goals. We will take advice and follow guidance as new objectives are added across all areas of this pledge.

Moving forward we will work closely with our brand partners, such as Vivienne Westwood, to make our new collections as less impactful as possible to people and planet. We are currently work hard experimenting with new materials and techniques which will allow more circularity of our products.