Star Garments Group (Star), one of the leading global apparel manufacturers championing a journey towards achieving sustainability that brings about positive social impact, recently announced that three of its production facilities in the country received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certifications by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
This included a LEED Gold for Star Garments Buttala and LEED Silver for Star Fashion Clothing Kaduwela and Star Garments Baddegama. With this, the total number of LEED certifications awarded to the Group is six. With these three certifications the group now has 2 LEED Platinum, 2 LEED Gold, and 2 LEED Silver certified factories in its portfolio. The Group has set an ambitious goal to certify all its 14 production facilities by 2024.
The Star Innovation Center in Katunayake is the first LEED Platinum building in Sri Lanka to be certified under latest LEED version 4 and regarded as the first ‘Passive House Design’ in Southeast Asia, which incorporates a design and construction methodology that results in an ultra-efficient, high-performance building with an overall energy reduction exceeding 70pct across the facility in comparison to conventional buildings. It was also the 2020 AIA New York (AIANY) Merit Award winner in the category of sustainability.
Buildings that are LEED certified have been designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance in energy efficiency, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reductions, improved indoor air quality and resource stewardship.
Qualifying for the USGBC’s LEED certification is an in-depth process that involves extremely detailed standards and guidelines, taking into account calculative and systematic scores using a point system categorized in five areas namely sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality.
Star is also Sri Lanka’s first umbrella group of apparel manufacturing facilities to be certified CarbonNeutral®, which is issued by the world’s leading retailer of carbon credits Natural Capital Partners. This landmark achievement comes after an extensive greenhouse gas assessment of all the facilities and independent verification. The carbon footprint across its 14 business units being 17,581.09tCO2e were completely offset in 2020. In 2021 the group managed to reduce its carbon footprint to 14,474 tCO2e and kept to its net zero carbon commitment by offsetting these.
Star Garments Group pledges to be an icon of sustainability, with a firm commitment towards growth that takes account of environmental impacts and delivers sustainable returns. The Group is currently working on complying the entire portfolio of factories with the HIGG Facility Environmental Module (HIGG FEM) for this year and have adopted CLEANCHAIN with the intention of improving the chemical inventory to be zero toxic by 2023. Further, Star has also partnered with INSEE ECOCYCLE to divert 100 percent of industrial materials from local landfills.
