How Outdoor Brands Report Sustainability—and Why It Matters
How annual impact reports enhance brands’ transparency and accountability
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While outdoor gear brands increasingly highlight product-level sustainability features—like Bluesign-approved materials and PFAS-free construction—detailed, long-term data on a brand’s overall impact is harder to find. That information typically lives in annual impact reports, which track progress over time. While not all brands publish them, the Better Trail sustainability team analyzes those that do to assess whether companies are actually reducing their impact—or simply marketing themselves as “sustainable.” Here’s why we rely on these reports, what makes a strong one, and the key insights they provide.
What is an Annual Impact Report?
An annual impact report is a detailed document that outlines a brand’s efforts and progress, from emissions reductions to responsible materials and ethical supply chains. While we refer to reports like this as “impact reports,” some brands call them “sustainability,” “corporate responsibility,” or “environmental, social, governance” reports. Ideally, these reports provide a transparent, data-driven look at both successes and challenges. While Better Trail focuses primarily on sustainability data to evaluate brands, impact reports often also include information on social initiatives, worker welfare, and broader business updates.
What Should a Brand Discuss in its Annual Impact Report?
A brand’s carbon footprint refers to its total greenhouse gas emissions from both direct sources, such as energy use, and indirect sources like shipping and manufacturing. Most brands report annual emissions in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), the standard metric for global warming potential that includes methane and other greenhouse gases. Because of this, emissions reporting is a core component of any impact report and a key indicator of a brand’s environmental impact. Brands committed to reducing their footprint often track emissions using frameworks such as the Higg Index, Greenhouse Gas Protocol, or The Change Climate Project.
Tracking emissions is a starting point—but real progress requires setting reduction targets, measuring results, and reporting on progress over time. Many brands align their goals with the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To strengthen accountability, companies may verify these targets through the Science Based Targets Initiative, which evaluates whether reduction goals are aligned with climate science.
REI’s latest Planet Report is an excellent example of how brands can make complex carbon footprint data relatively easy to digest. It includes six years of emissions data, tracked using Higg Index tools, along with a breakdown of 2024 emissions sources and clear explanations of progress made to date. The report also outlines REI’s five-year plan for further reductions. For more, read our article The Higg Index, Explained.
Shifting from a linear “take, make, waste” economy to a more circular model is one of a brand's most important sustainability actions. More companies are adopting this approach by implementing resale, repair, and recycling programs that extend the life of outdoor gear. In Nemo’s 2024 impact report, for instance, the brand details its efforts to build a more circular supply chain by designing products that are recycled, repairable, resellable, and recyclable. To do this, Nemo created a recycled and recyclable fabric and partnered with a chemical recycling company to ensure that products can be recycled instead of thrown out. For more, check out our article Circularity in Outdoor Gear, Explained.
A thorough annual impact report includes a dedicated materials section outlining how a brand incorporates low-impact components into its gear. These often include recycled, Bluesign-approved, and responsible materials, such as those certified to the Responsible Down Standard, the Responsible Wool Standard, and the Leather Working Group.
Some brands go above and beyond. Rab, for example, has taken transparency a step further with its Material Facts, which presents a nutrition label–style breakdown of a product’s sustainability attributes. This includes details like fluorocarbon content across zippers, trims, and insulation, as well as the recycled content of each fabric and the share of renewable energy used in production. When we spoke to Adam Chamberlain, Rab’s U.S. Manager, he described Material Facts as a “massive undertaking,” made possible by strong supplier relationships and a deep commitment to tracing materials, tracking origins, and understanding product composition.
In Rab’s 2025 sustainability report, the company provides updates on the Material Facts Collective, its initiative to expand the Material Facts methodology to other outdoor brands. Rab now offers a full implementation toolkit to support brands in adopting the methodology. For more, check out our article Responsible Materials in Outdoor Gear, Explained.
A thorough annual impact report includes at least one section outlining how a brand reduces waste across packaging, excess materials, and wastewater. Mammut’s 2024 Responsibility Report highlights several initiatives, including 100% recycled and recyclable packaging and efforts to eliminate plastic wherever possible. As part of the European Outdoor Group’s Single Use Plastic Project, Mammut collaborates with more than 30 brands to reduce packaging waste. The report also covers its use of solution-dyed materials, which significantly reduce water use and chemically contaminated wastewater.
Mammut further details emissions associated with production waste and outlines programs to recycle and repurpose leftover materials. In 2024, the brand created 30,000 apparel pieces from fabric scraps and 7,600 climbing ropes from leftover rope nylon. It also highlights product lines redesigned to reduce material use, such as the Dream series sleeping bags, which achieved a 33% reduction in fabric use.
REI’s Planet Report includes five years of waste management data, along with initiatives such as eliminating in-store shopping bags (both plastic and paper). It also outlines new recycling programs, including a partnership with Trex to recycle bike foam and plastic film into plastic lumber—recycling nearly 2.5 million pounds of plastic to date. REI also partners with Call2Recycle for e-bike battery recycling and has recycled 1,954 pounds of batteries to date.
A brand’s environmental impact extends beyond greenhouse gas emissions and recycled materials. Columbia’s 2024 impact report offers a model for how brands could consider a broader array of issues when addressing their environmental impact, including chemical use and management, animal welfare, transportation, facility operations, and microplastics. The report outlines the company’s chemical management policy, its Restricted Substances List (informed by Bluesign), responsible sourcing standards for leather, wool, and down, and efforts to reduce transportation emissions, including the installation of EV charging stations at corporate headquarters. Companies committed to sustainability often take a comprehensive approach rather than focusing on a single area for improvement.
Less common—but present in the most effective reports—is a section on manufacturing, often outlining how a brand is working to uphold responsible practices related to human rights and environmental impact. For example, Patagonia provides a map of its suppliers in its Work in Progress Report, achieving 100% traceability across its supply chain. It also details the third-party certifications it upholds for these suppliers, including Regenerative Organic Certified, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, and the Responsible Wool and Responsible Down Standards.
Patagonia also provides detailed, transparent reporting on its progress toward improving labor and human rights standards across its supply chain—an effort it has prioritized since becoming a founding member of the Fair Labor Association in the early 1990s. The company reports the number of workers making finished goods (currently 89,806) and tracks progress toward providing living wages with data dating back to 2020. Patagonia also outlines its partnerships with Fair Trade Certified factories, contributing $5.9 million in premiums in 2024 and over $37 million to date—funding community initiatives such as childcare, medical clinics, and water purification systems.
Impact reports often highlight partnerships with community-driven programs that align with a brand’s mission. Fjallraven’s 2024 sustainability report, for example, outlines its Arctic Fox Initiative—a program it created to fund wildlife conservation and outdoor recreation projects. Further funding for the Arctic Fox Initiative came through the Rainbow Fund, a program that organizes workshops for Fjȃllrȃven employees centered around diversity, inclusion, and prejudice.
Similarly, Patagonia’s grants and giving programs focus on funding grassroots environmental organizations working on climate action, conservation, and environmental justice. In 2025, the company gave 14.7 million dollars to over 824 grantees. Additionally, in 2022, the company transferred ownership to a trust and the Holdfast Collective, directing roughly $180 million in profits (2022–2025) toward climate and conservation efforts while enabling advocacy and lobbying.
A credible impact report also acknowledges a brand’s shortcomings. Progress isn’t always linear, and we value when companies are candid about the challenges they face. Rab’s 2024 sustainability report, for instance, notes that the brand missed its target to phase out PFAS by Autumn/Winter 2024 due to legacy fabric inventory and supplier timelines. Rab confirmed with Better Trail that it completed its PFAS phaseout in 2025, as noted in its 2025 report.
Notably, Patagonia acknowledges in its Work in Progress Report the inherent tension between reducing its environmental impact and the reality that its operations will always have one—and that companies can’t fully offset the impact they create. This level of honesty builds trust, increases clarity, and, frankly, keeps things real.
How Better Trail Rates Annual Impact Reports
To sum it up, a strong annual impact report includes measurable data on a brand’s sustainability initiatives and progress toward its goals. These reports vary in format—from simple, text-heavy documents to polished multimedia webpages—but aesthetics aside, the most effective ones cover key areas like carbon footprint tracking, circularity (recycling, reuse, and resale), responsible materials, partnerships, and broader environmental impacts. A thorough report reflects a company’s transparency and accountability, helping us cut through greenwashing. It also allows us to cross-reference claims with third-party frameworks such as the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi), Bluesign System Partnerships, or The Change Climate Project.
At Better Trail, publishing a comprehensive annual impact report is part of the sustainability rating for every product and brand we review. Brands that meet all of the criteria above receive full points for this category, and we expect reports to be published annually. Partial points are given when a report lacks key details or isn’t updated each year.
What Does it Take to Create an Impact Report?
Creating a comprehensive impact report requires substantial time, money, and human resources. Moreover, compiling all the information into an impact report is a marathon of data collection, analysis, and communication. To start, you need to be tracking data about carbon emissions, materials, and partnerships in the first place. Then, someone has to analyze the data and compile it into a readable format.
Debbie Read, Head of Corporate Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at Equip Outdoor Technologies (Rab and Lowe Alpine), said her company’s annual impact report takes around six months to complete—from planning to launch—and involves multiple stakeholders. One of the biggest challenges, she noted, is simplifying complex topics for a wide audience, including industry partners, retailers, consumers, employees, and media. In sum, even brands with internal sustainability teams often invest significant resources in the process, which is why some smaller outdoor brands may not have one. It’s not necessarily because they aren’t doing the work (although, in some cases, they may not be); but because they don’t have the capacity and resources to produce a report.
But here’s the thing: While most brands lean towards resource-intensive impact reports with lots of graphics, there are other ways to communicate the information. Helly Hansen's 2024 report is text-focused and lacks the fancy graphics and pictures found in other reports, but it’s still quite effective at communicating its sustainability initiatives and progress. Even industry titans like Patagonia sometimes take a different approach. Patagonia weaves sustainability data into its brand website, embedding short films about topics like recyclability and PFAS alongside its products for sale and in its website's “our footprint" section. Only recently did Patagonia consolidate this information into a single document with its 2025 Work in Progress Report.
Ultimately, an impact report’s value lies in its transparency and the quality of its data. Whether presented as a polished publication or a simple PDF, what matters most is that brands are taking action and clearly sharing their progress.
Should Impact Reporting be Required?
Impact reports aren’t required in the outdoor industry—yet—but they’re one of the most effective tools for improving accountability. They give brands a platform to show what they’re doing, acknowledge where they fall short, and drive progress across the industry. Should every brand publish one? In a perfect world, yes. But expecting all companies—especially smaller brands—to produce formal reports isn’t always realistic. That said, we’d like to see more brands take steps toward greater transparency and accountability. Even a simple, clear overview of sustainability efforts and goals on a brand’s website can go a long way. Ultimately, the more openly brands share their progress, the more the industry moves toward meaningful change.
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