Vestiaire Collective

Valuing existing avoided emissions assessments with Climate Dividends

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Dounia Wone, Chief Impact Officer at Vestiaire Collective shares her feedback as a Climate Dividends user and her perspective on the initiative. 

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Check this video to learn more and a more detailed, text version below. 

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About Vestiaire Collective

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Vestiaire Collective is a global platform for pre-owned luxury fashion, contributing to transforming the fashion industry by bringing together sellers and buyers of pre-loved items through a second-hand platform. We offer an alternative to buying new, therefore extending the life of existing fashion items. Through its circular business model, Vestiaire Collective contributes to avoiding GHG emissions compared to first-hand purchases.

👉 Website

👉 Registry entry

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Motivations to join

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Dounia:

We’ve always considered that our activities positively contribute to global decarbonization by replacing first-hand purchasing with second-hand, therefore avoiding the impacts related to the production of new items. However, there's a significant difference between “knowing” we have an impact and being able to “prove” it with robust data. 

We’ve been working since 2020 on our avoided impacts, building an internal methodology to measure our avoided emissions and other positive impacts. While our methodology had already been acknowledged by experts and auditors in the context of the DPEF, there was still a lack of standardization of avoided emissions methodologies and we wanted to go further.

Participating in the Climate Dividends initiative was a way to ensure that our methodology fitted into their independent, transparent framework, therefore this enabling us to communicate our impact with greater confidence, internally and externally.

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Methodology used

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Dounia:

Our methodology assesses avoided emissions by comparing the emissions induced by purchases on Vestiaire Collective to those from a baseline scenario where the items would have been purchased first-hand. 

A key step of the methodology is that we also factor in a "substitution rate", equal to the proportion of purchases on Vestiaire Collective that effectively replace a new item purchase. This rate, determined through consumer surveys, was 79% in 2023.

The project was relatively straightforward for us, as we had already been measuring our avoided emissions for several years, with a well-defined methodology. 

Most of the time invested went toward three main areas: 

1. onboarding internal stakeholders and validating our participation
2. filling-in the standardized claim documentation - the Solution Detailed Declaration (SDD)
3. preparing our external communications

In our case, as our avoided emissions were already audited as part of our Declaration of Non-Financial Performance (DNFP), we negotiated with our auditors that there would be no additional costs.

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Benefits of using Climate Dividends

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Dounia:

Climate Dividends offer a rigorous framework to measure avoided emissions, bringing both credibility and transparency to our climate impact communications. By relying on this structured approach, we are able to showcase our contribution to a more sustainable future more confidently.

Partnering with Climate Dividends in addition to our avoided emissions calculation is a way of enhancing credibility through their standardized methodology. The framework is backed by reputable institutions, including ADEME, which adds a layer of trust and authority to our efforts. By aligning with Climate Dividends, we’re able to validate our positive climate impact through a system that’s both transparent and widely recognized.

This partnership reaffirms that our activities are indeed making a meaningful, verifiable positive contribution to the environment.

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Next steps

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Dounia:

I would definitely recommend Climate Dividends to companies that are actively working to avoid or remove carbon emissions and that wish to be able to demonstrate and effectively communicate their climate impact to external stakeholders, especially investors. This is a great way to value the positive climate contribution of companies.

We're looking forward to the next chapter of the initiative, and specially seeing Climate Dividends becoming a tangible asset for both companies and investor. How will they become an actual part of the companies' financial valuation, and how can it incentivized investors to concretely fund these companies?

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