Download

Share this page

Reporting

GRI Index

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 4.11

Gildan has published annual Corporate Citizenship Reports covering the Company’s initiatives since 2004. Due to the large quantity of information and in order to offer readers a friendlier and dynamic format, last year we migrated all of the information to this new dedicated website. For social and environmental responsibility professionals, the information in this website has been structured based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3.1 Guidelines. Gildan has presented its reporting for 2012 to the Global Reporting Initiative’s Report Services which have concluded that it fulfills the requirement of Application Level A (pdf - 306.0Kb).

The GRI Index will help you navigate through the different guidelines. The GRI guidelines, developed by a wide range of international stakeholders, have been adopted to enhance the quality, credibility and comparability of the information we report. These guidelines were applied in the collection and interpretation of all data presented within the report and provide a widely-accepted, credible framework for reporting on the economic, environmental and social performance of an organization, irrespective of size, sector or location. Additionally, guidelines contained in the GRI Apparel and Footwear Sector Supplement were also followed.

This website’s information focuses on Gildan’s 2012 fiscal year and discloses information on issues pertaining to Gildan owned locations in North America, Central America, the Caribbean Basin and Asia, and any significant impact resulting from operations therein. When deemed relevant, we have included data from earlier years.

This website contains information on topics and matters that reflect the organization’s sustainability programs and initiatives with regard to corporate governance, people’s well-being, community engagement, environmental protection and product sustainability. We report on these initiatives as we believe they are of interest to our stakeholders, more specifically our employees, shareholders, customers, business partners, governments, local authorities, civil society organizations and the communities within which we operate.


Information pertaining to Anvil, which was acquired on May 9, 2012, has not been included in our 2012 data, as the Company was acquired mid-year. We will begin including the results from the Anvil operations in our next reporting year.

In 2012, Gildan established reduction targets for its owned sites for energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption as well as waste sent to landfill. As part of this exercise, Gildan partnered with a third party consultant in order to review its previous years reporting in terms of the indicators linked to reduction targets to account for the Company’s recent acquisitions. Accordingly, the baseline year of 2010 has been adjusted and subsequent years’ reports will be updated when a significant cumulative change in the baseline year metrics is triggered. The following conditions will require an adjustment if a significant change is identified:

  1. A structural change of Gildan’s organizational boundaries (i.e. merger, acquisition, or divestiture);
  2. A change in calculation methodologies or emission factors;
  3. Additional or new data or methodology are available on source data that was not previously available; or
  4. A significant error or a number of cumulative errors in the inventory are discovered. “Significant” is typically defined as a cumulative change (+/-) of five percent (5%) or larger in total base year figures.

An operational control methodology has been selected for the aggregation of Gildan’s reportable data, inclusive of all Gildan owned facilities.

For the 2012 reporting, the following acquisitions, which occured since the established baseline of 2010, have been integrated into the 2010 baseline (and subsequent years) :

  • Acquisition of the Shahriyar Fabrics integrated manufacturing facility in Bangladesh;
  • Acquisition of GoldToeMoretz facilities and offices in the U.S.

The expansion of Gildan’s Rio Nance complex in Honduras to include the Rio Nance V textile facility will not require a baseline year recalculation since it is considered as organic growth.

Additionally, based on availability and quality of data in the baseline year for water and waste streams, representative data points from Gildan facilities in 2012 have been back-cast into 2010 in order to re-establishing the baseline. When errors from previous years reporting have been identified, they have been corrected and validated with our third-party consultant to align the calculation methodology across all years in order to ensure an accurate comparison.

We are confident that the exercise we undertook this year to adjust our baseline year properly incorporated the recent acquisitions of the Company and will set the records straight in terms of our environmental target reporting, which we will continue to use for our future reporting.

  • Materiality

    Data collected and compiled within this report is the result of a collaborative effort by Gildan staff throughout the Company’s many locations with a variety of measurement techniques having been adopted. The criteria used to determine materiality for information included in this report was based predominantly on benchmarking exercises. The following factors were also taken into account: principal concerns in the apparel industry, relevant and applicable laws and regulations, international agreements such as the ILO Conventions, as well as any perceived impact or risk to our operations. As we further formalize our CSR strategy and programs, we anticipate refining what is considered material in our reporting efforts.

  • Review

    Gildan’s Disclosure Committee has reviewed the information contained herein in order to ensure our stakeholders are provided with a proper representation of our performance for the 2012 fiscal year.

    We invite you to go to the GRI Index section for the list of indicators addressed in this report. You can click here to consult our previous Corporate Citizenship Reports.

    Should you have any questions and/or comments about this website or our responsible practices in general, please contact us at cc@gildan.com.

  • Gildan’s integrated solution to track social and environmental performance

    Gildan continues to make progress in measuring and managing its social and environmental performance across a growing base of operations and production volume. In order to achieve the next level of performance, in 2010 we developed and implemented a fully automated and integrated solution that enables us to track key social and environmental performance indicators including energy use, solid and liquid waste, water consumption, emissions, spills, reforestation, training, compensation, employee diversity, and pay equity.

    Available in English, French and Spanish, this platform links operational systems at all facilities with internal and third-party auditing, action planning, and follow-up. The new tool also enables us to generate detailed monthly, quarterly and annual reports for internal use and public disclosure.

    In the coming year, we will continue to develop this solution in order to increase the number of indicators to be tracked. We will also strive to continuously improve the tool in order to make it more user-friendly such that we can continue to rely on it as one of our main management tools for environmental and social performance data.

    “ Our Corporate Citizenship Integrated Solution has completely changed our way of reporting by integrating all elements into a single tool that allows us to not only analyze our performance at the global level, but also at the regional level, and use this information to leverage performance and create improvements.” Julie Cournoyer
    Manager, Corporate Social Responsibility

I WANT TO SEND THIS PAGE