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Although Decathlon
With previous experiences as Head of Sustainability at
Fujio: How did you translate your passion for sustainability into a career?
Turrell: As a little kid, I was always really passionate about wanting to have an impact and making a difference. I grew up very idealistically wanting to be able to try and make the world a better place. And that’s important because for me, life is really short and we only have one planet, and we only have one life. So we have to make the most of it and I felt personally strongly that individual contribution counts and we all have a role to play.
So my motivations and how I got into sustainability, initially I worked in international development in Asia with NGOs, but I realized that the international aid industry and the process of donor funding and projects was quite challenging. I was working on building a hospital on the border of Cambodia and Thailand and we couldn’t build the hospital quickly enough to get donor funding from USAID. And so we ended up having to spend the money on land cruisers, otherwise, the money would have gone and I was like “That’s crazy, there’s gotta be another way of doing this.”
It’s through that I started with internships and getting into roles in sustainability consultancy because I firmly believe that business can be a force for good. I don’t think all businesses always are, but I wanted to play a role in trying to help businesses have a positive impact on people and the planet. It’s increasingly real the impacts that we’re seeing that humanity is having on the planet so it drives me even more to want to be able to play a role in that.
You joined Decathlon roughly 10 months ago. What are your daily responsibilities and are you enjoying the position?
Day to day? Every day’s different. We’re headquartered in Lille, France, which is where most of the central team is, but we have a global network of hundreds of teammates around the world. So every day looks a little different depending on what going on. But for me, and you’ll be unsurprised to hear, lots of meetings. A lot of work on defining the strategies for what we need to do and making sure the right people are in the right places and governance, being able to deliver to them, and helping the team unblock any issues that come up.
It’s been a really great experience so far. It’s only been 10 months, but even in 10 months, I feel like we covered a lot of ground.
Why did you join the team at Decathlon? I’m sure other global companies were hiring for sustainability leadership positions.
Our CEO, Barbara Martin Coppola, is incredibly inspiring. And for me, as a female leader, to be able to work with another female leader is incredible. It’s very motivating.
Decathlon is a really interesting company. It’s the world’s largest sporting goods retailer, but we’re also a manufacturer and a brand. We produce a lot and have an integrated supply chain. We’re present in 70 countries around the world and we have a workforce of more than 100,000 teammates, so we have not only a big responsibility but also a great opportunity to be able to be a leading force for good in the world.
Specifically, because we’re in the sporting goods sector, there’s this massive opportunity because sporting goods play an incredible role. By playing sports and exercising, you can positively impact your mental and physical health as a person. But there’s also this role to helping to support and promote planetary health.
It’s a global business, and I’m interested in global impacts. I enjoy meeting new people and understanding the cultural opportunities and challenges that multinational businesses face. Navigating how we actually drive change on the ground in where we operate.
The opportunity to be the chief sustainability officer for a global multinational company is really amazing. I’m someone that’s very driven and motivated by what I do but I also know that in order to have the most impact, I need to be in a position where I can actually influence and drive the change directly.
Those are my key motivations as to why I joined.
Why will it take over 25 years for Decathlon to achieve
We have science-based targets that have been validated by the Science-Based Targets initiative. What that means is that we have targets for decarbonization of the business. Absolute decarbonization so not offsetting, not credits, completely taking out carbon.
Why does it take so long? Because we’re a global business and our climate targets include everything. It’s not just in our operations. It’s all of those big, complex global supply chains. We may operate in 70 countries, but our supply chain covers so many more countries. We are touching everywhere around the world from the cotton we source to the metals that go into our bikes. That makes it complex because the easy bit is to control what we do in our own operations but the hard stuff is how we influence those other parts of the supply chain to be able to also decarbonize.
We’re talking about people’s livelihood and their businesses, who are trying to make a living and feed their families, and at the same time, we have companies asking them to work differently in a lower emissions environment. So we also have to play a role in helping them do that, so that means incentivizing some of the changes. For example, at the end of last year, we launched a power purchasing agreement with 14 of our suppliers in China to commit to funding renewable energy. Together, we would be able to produce renewable energy for the next 5 years equivalent to 300,000 homes. It’s not everything, but it’s a start and those are the initiatives we need to do more.
For me personally and professionally, it’s the right thing to set robust and ambitious targets and commitments, but I don’t believe in greenwashing. If we tried to set a target before 2050, I think it would have been difficult because still a lot of the solutions today such as technology and infrastructure aren’t in place to drive decarbonization quicker.
We want to be the world’s most low-impact circular sports business. That means we not only have to make our products more sustainable and easier to reuse, return, and recycle, but we also have to sell differently. We’re going from a place where you can turn up to a Decathlon store and buy products to renting and returning old products so that someone else can enjoy them. That’s the second life approach and that’s our current priority that will help accelerate how we keep materials in the system for longer rather than letting stuff go to waste.
Is it a misconception that sustainability is unprofitable?
Typically, for most companies, sustainability is still seen as a cost and for those working in sustainability. This is a challenge because we have to influence businesses to invest and do things differently but without necessarily seeing a return and that value coming back. But this is where I think circularity has a completely different role to play. We genuinely believe the future is circular.
In order to create a circular future, though. We need to do business differently. But we also need to influence and educate customers and communities so that they don’t want just more new stuff but see the value in wanting to buy secondhand and rent. So there’s a big cultural change that we need to see in society. And Decathlon can play a role in that. But we can’t do it on our own. The reason I’m saying circular is so important is because we are seeing growth. Like massive growth in circular business models.
Just last year we had, we saw circular sales in excess of €400 million. Given that actually, we’ve only really been pushing this circularity program for the last 18 months. So we’re seeing growth in circular business models. Like secondhand second life or in rental. That’s more than a 100% increase year on year. So there’s definitely business potential here But we have to make it easy for customers That’s really, really important.
According to Good On You, Decathlon’s sustainability rating is 2/5. Is this accurate?
I would say there are a few errors in the assessment rating. So we have, I mentioned them earlier, but we’ve got validated science-based targets for our climate targets. In fact, we first got our targets independently validated back in 2019. We validated this year. We’ve got a really strong program on climate and emissions reduction in place. Including how we eco-design our products.
In terms of the social impact topics that come up, one of the recommendations was it was to do with the use of Smeta best practice guidance. We’re actually using Smeta standards as part of our Decathlon supplier compliance program. Our code of conduct is available online. All of our methodologies and our social compliance targets have been shared in our extra-financial reporting. In fact, Decathlon’s sustainability report is incredibly comprehensive and probably more comprehensive than most reports I’ve read.
And as it relates to Xinjiang and cotton we actually don’t source cotton from that region. Our cotton comes from three different certified sources. Organic so it’s 100% traceable, the Better Cotton initiative, or it’s recycled. And we have very, very strong processes in place to ensure that the cotton that our suppliers are using in production is coming specifically from the providers that we have assessed, rated, and assured. So we are very confident and we know that the cotton used is not coming from Xinjiang and therefore, any associated risk with Uygur forced labour.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
