Elevate Textiles hits 2025 climate targets, but supply-chain data remains thin

Elevate Textiles said it met its 2025 greenhouse-gas and water-reduction targets from a 2019 baseline, a clean headline for a company whose fabrics and trims run through American & Efird, Burlington Industries, Cone Denim, Gütermann and Safety Components. The harder read is what sits behind the numbers: the disclosure gives little scope 3 detail, leaving supply-chain progress difficult to judge with any confidence.

The company said it is still on track for its 2030 Science Based Targets initiative goals, including an absolute 46.2 percent reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions from the 2019 base year. Its scope 3 target is equally specific on paper, calling for a 46.2 percent reduction in emissions tied to fuel and energy-related activities, purchased goods and services, and processing of sold products. In a textile business where the most meaningful climate burden often hides upstream and downstream, that level of target-setting matters. The level of disclosure matters just as much.

Elevate also said it secured official SBTi validation for its 2050 net-zero emissions target and revalidated its 2030 emissions targets. Those marks give the company a stronger climate frame than many peers can claim, but the report’s strongest operational details are still the most local ones. Two new rooftop solar projects and one new Zero Liquid Discharge facility were added during the year, the kind of plant-level interventions that cut electricity use, reduce wastewater discharge and make sustainability visible in a way corporate language rarely does.

The company said it achieved its lowest employee injury rate ever in 2025, another sign that the sustainability conversation at Elevate now stretches beyond carbon and water into the daily mechanics of making textiles safely. That broader framing sits under its internal Ten Threads of Sustainability program, which Elevate says is designed to improve transparency and traceability while aligning the business with the UN Global Compact’s Ten Principles and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Jeffrey P. Pritchett, Elevate’s chief executive officer and a member of the board, said the road ahead is more difficult because of capital and operating costs for decarbonization, shifting supply chains and rising energy costs. Jimmy Summers, the company’s chief sustainability officer and vice president for Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability, said Elevate will keep making monthly progress through those pressures. The company first announced its sustainability commitments in September 2019, and by now the challenge is not whether it can make targets. It is whether the next report can show, in enough detail, how the fabric of those gains was actually woven.