Environmental stewardship

Our Global Environment and Energy (GE&E) Policy, Restricted Substances Code of Practice (RSCP), and Environmental Management System (EMS) govern our environmental stewardship across our operations.

Our GE&E Policy describes and reinforces the behaviours that help ensure the Company will operate in compliance with local laws, as well as our internal standards. Our EMS is based on ISO 14001, an international environmental management standard that guides our procedures for water conservation and management, wastewater discharge, energy consumption, chemical handling and storage, raw materials, waste generation, biodiversity protection, and emissions and spill control.

Gildan’s President, Manufacturing, oversees the Company’s environmental performance; the Vice-President, Global Social Compliance and Environmental Affairs, (who reports to the Senior Vice-President, Global Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing, and Distribution), is responsible for maintaining the Company’s EMS.

To help ensure Gildan’s manufacturing facilities align with our GE&E Policy, all leaders and environmental, health, and safety (EHS) employees at Gildan-operated facilities have environmental targets included in their annual performance plans. In addition, Gildan’s Board of Directors ties a portion of our senior executive short-term incentive program to the achievement of ESG goals, including environmentally focused objectives.

As part of our EMS, each Gildan-operated manufacturing facility is required to set objectives that align with the Company’s overall goals. We regularly conduct internal environmental audits at our manufacturing facilities to verify compliance and evaluate the effectiveness of these objectives. The frequency of these audits depends on the manufacturing activities performed at a facility and their potential impact on the environment and our operations.

We conduct internal audits of all Gildan-operated facilities based on environmental risk, at a minimum every two years. When we find instances of non-conformities¹ Gildan defines a non-conformity incident as one that violates environmental law, causes an environmental impact, or has a risk of causing an environmental impact or a breach of our internal standards as defined in our EMS.     or improvement opportunities, we work closely with the facility to identify the main reasons for the issue and establish a plan to bring the facility into compliance in a timely fashion.

Additionally, we continue to invest in systems and technologies to measure, monitor, and optimize the sustainability of our operations. Our capital expenditures in this area reinforce our commitment to the environment and the health and safety of our employees.

We are committed to selecting suppliers and contractors that adopt sustainable and environmentally responsible practices, as outlined in our GE&E Policy. We ask suppliers that provide goods and services over a certain financial threshold about their practices aligned with our Code of Conduct through a questionnaire that includes environmental criteria.

Once onboard, we require all finished product contractors and key raw material suppliers to formally acknowledge our policies, codes, and EMS practices, and agree to comply with them throughout the term of their relationship with us as part of a written agreement. Our finished product contractors and certain key suppliers must also follow our Social & Sustainable Compliance Guidebook, which includes our environmental standards and practices. We conduct internal audits of our finished product contractors against the environmental and social standards in the Guidebook as part of our monitoring program.