Environmental Responsibility

We use professional and independent third-party auditors to conduct audits at all our garment manufacturers. The result is a detailed audit report describing factory compliance with the requirements of the Fair Labor Association’s (FLA) Code of Conduct, FLA benchmarks, local law and regulations. If any non-compliances are identified we support the factory to create a remediation plan with detailed corrective actions, responsibilities and time lines. We also control and track the plan’s progress and completion.

Not as yet but as a FLA member our efforts are independently verified and thus the standards we comply with are publicly available.

Sustainability is an integral element of Gore’s culture and business. For us sustainability means acting responsibly – fulfill and even surpass all applicable environmental regulations as well as social, health and safety standards. For more information: Gore as a Responsible Enterprise

It is part of our Social Responsibility Program to ensure that at least legal minimum wages are paid. Our target, however, is to provide compensation that is sufficient to fulfill basic needs and discretionary income. Making highly functional apparel requires skilled workers and our manufacturing partners have to compete for and retain talent.

We carefully select our garment manufacturing partners and focus on long-term and trustful partnerships. Furthermore, we perform regular audits at our garment manufacturers to verify compliance with local law and FLA Code of Conduct. As multiple auditing does not provide any benefit, we strive to collaborate with other brands to share audit reports and cooperate on the remediation plans.

No, our products meet the highest safety and quality standards and are therefore safe to use as well as environmentally.

It is an independent third-party standard for textiles, intermediates and end products at all stages of production. The OEKO-TEX® system is well respected worldwide for its science-based approach to textile safety validation. It limits for regulated substances, as well as unregulated substances known to be harmful to the health of the wearer.

Product safety is an integral part of the quality assurance system of GORE® Wear. Against this background we only accept suppliers and garment manufacturers with quality management ensuring conformity with the Oeko-Tex® standard. Selecting fabrics and materials we use as far as possible only certified products. For all other materials we require test reports proving at least the same safety level than the Oeko-Tex® standard. In this way we accomplish the transparency of all applied materials and their ingredients in our production chain of our products.

All used fabrics, materials and ingredients up to the sewing thread are carefully selected and not approved for production before all required and current certificates & test reports are available. This kind of verification is implemented for each collection in both summer and winter.

Additionally we check ready made garments on a random basis at our distribution warehouse identifying and preventing any unwanted divergences from our product safety standard.

We make products in factories in Italy, Romania, Turkey, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Click here to see a detailed list of our suppliers.

FLA is a collaborative effort of socially responsible companies, universities and civil society organizations to promote and protect workers’ rights and to improve working conditions globally through adherence to international standards. FLA is an international organization headquartered in Washington, DC, with offices in China, Switzerland and Turkey. FLA creates lasting solutions to abusive labor practices by offering tools and resources to companies, delivering training to factory workers and management, conducting due diligence through independent assessments, and advocating for greater accountability and transparency from companies, factories and others involved in global supply chains.

For more information please visit FLA’s website: www.fairlabor.org

Please find the FLA Code of Conduct here:http://www.fairlabor.org/our-work/labor-standards

We select our factories based on many criteria, for example quality, technologies, skills as well as environmental and social performance and price. We are seeking long term business partnerships and therefore it is important to us that our manufacturing partners are committed to providing safe workplaces and treating their employees in a fair manner.

Gore is a founding member of the Chemicals Management Working Group (CMWG), which provides education, guidance and decision-making tools to reduce the environmental impact of the outdoor industry (https://outdoorindustry.org/sustainable-business/chemicals-management/). Gore is also a member of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC). SAC developed the Higg Index, a tool which measures a product’s sustainability performance across the industry value chain, which is based on LCA methodology (www.apparelcoalition.org). Furthermore, Gore is an active contributor to the Sustainability Working Group (SWG) of the European Outdoor Group (EOG) https://www.europeanoutdoorgroup.com/ and the Sustainability Working Group of the US Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) ( https://outdoorindustry.org/sustainable-business/). Gore is, moreover, a member of Dialog Textilbekleidung (DTB), which is a coalition of companies from the textile and apparel industry. Their goal is to improve the quality of products. Companies from the whole textile chain build study groups to work on questions and tasks and to develop solutions (http://www.dialog-dtb.de/en/).