Apparel, footwear and accessories company VF Corporation, home to numerous leading brands including Timberland, The North Face, Kodiak and Vans, announced today a series of sustainable packaging goals, including a target to eliminate single-use plastic packaging by 2025.

Other sustainable packaging goals introduced by the company include and interim target to move to 100% recycled and/or biobased content for single-use plastics packaging by 2023, and to have all paper-based packaging be recycled content (minimum 80 percent, where performance allows), third-party certified virgin content, or a combination of the two by 2023. In addition, the company pledged to commit to leadership in crucial industry coalitions and policy initiatives to build circular packaging infrastructure that will enable its 2025 goal.

Along with the new sustainable packaging goals, VF also announced several other sustainability initiatives, including targets to achieve zero waste in all company-owned distribution centers by April 2021, eliminating all non-essential single use-plastics for which there is a viable product alternative in its own offices, direct operations and events by 2023, working with retailers and industry peers to support the development of collection platforms and recycling technology, and implementing sustainability best practices in its internal and external sponsored events, among others.

Jeannie Renné-Malone, VP of Global Sustainability for VF, said:

“With a portfolio comprising some of the world’s most iconic apparel and footwear brands, we recognize we play an important role as environmental stewards and can serve as a catalyst for industry movements that drive positive change. Our new global packaging goals are an example of how we can leverage our scale for significant impact. In just one year, we could potentially eliminate as many as 100 million polybags from our packaging waste.”