Timberland Showcases Responsibly Made Products at Organic Trade Association Pop-Up

Global outdoor lifestyle brand Timberland recently joined organic fiber brands MetaWear and Synergy, along with 21 other companies to sponsor the Organic Trade Association’s two day “Live Organic from Farm to Home” pop-up event in Manhattan. The event was designed to educate consumers on the importance of organic materials, while showcasing the latest in organic products for the closet and home, from organic cotton t-shirts and wool sweaters to organic mattresses. Attendees were encouraged to connect the dots between an organic end-product, where the product materials came from, and their environmental impacts.  

Over 38 million pounds of pesticides were used on conventional cotton in 2014 in the US, making cotton the third largest crop in terms of pesticide use, according to the US Department of Agriculture. At the event, Timberland addressed this challenge, discussing the brand’s increasing use of recycled content and organic cotton in its apparel, footwear and accessories.

"At Timberland, we hold ourselves accountable for what goes into our products as well as how they're made, and we constantly seek innovative solutions to reduce our environmental impact," said Colleen Vien, sustainability director for Timberland. "Conventionally grown cotton uses more insecticides and requires significantly more water than organically grown cotton. As such, Timberland has had a longstanding goal of increasing our use of organic cotton year over year." 

Part of this goal includes a feasibility study to bring back cotton farming to Haiti through the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA). Timberland partnered with the SFA five years ago to create a sustainable business model for smallholder farmers to tend to a network of nurseries that produce up to one million trees annually in return for training and seeds for their own farms. The aim of sponsoring the cotton study is that Timberland can transition from being an early supporter of smallholder farmers in Haiti, to potentially being a customer, purchasing cotton for use in their own products.

The Organic Trade Association is a membership-based business association for organic agriculture and products in North America, and is the leading voice for organic trade in the United States, representing over 9,500 organic business across 50 states. Its members include growers, shippers, processors, certifiers, farmers’ associations, distributors, importers, exporters, consultants, retailers, and others. To learn more, visit http://www.ota.com.

To learn more about Timberland’s commitment to responsibly made products, visit https://www.timberland.com/responsibility/product.html.