Timberland releases Q1 2009 CSR performance results

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Timberland releases Q1 2009 CSR performance results

STRATHAM, N.H.  - June 15, 2009. The Timberland Company announced its Q1 2009 CSR performance which is now available on www.timberland.justmeans.com.

In 2008 Timberland moved from annual CSR reporting to providing performance data quarterly in order to: 

• Incorporate stakeholder feedback in real-time engagements into our decision-making throughout the year.
• Strengthen communication channels within Timberland to reinforce alignment between the CSR team and Business Units (who are critical for carrying out our performance improvements).
• Tie our CSR performance management to the company's financial review calendar, essentially reviewing CSR performance the same way we review financial performance within the business.

Stakeholder engagement is central to the development of CSR at Timberland so we disclose our quarterly metrics online through a web 2.0 platform in order to enhance the opportunity for dialogue. 

Highlights from this quarter's performance are as follows, organized by Timberland Four CSR Pillars: energy, product, workplace, and service.

Q1 2009 Highlights

ENERGY

• We achieved continued greenhouse gas emissions reductions due to less air travel and a conversion of our Danville distribution center to renewable electricity.
  
• We continue to report supply chain emissions in our effort to address the largest part of our carbon footprint. We are refining our data collection from factories and will report emissions related to Timberland-only products later in 2009. Establishing a baseline for Timberland-related emissions will allow us to work more effectively with factories on carbon management.

PRODUCT

• The growth in our Earthkeepers^TM product line has resulted in our apparel team and licensees greatly exceeding our organic cotton procurement target. This reduces our dependence on conventional cotton, which is grown with harmful pesticides and herbicides.
• We are now reporting our consumption of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which is a more holistic measure of hazardous chemical consumption than our previous water based adhesive metric. Tracking this metric will allow us to better manage the chemicals in our footwear supply chain. 

WORKPLACE

• We continue to see factories that are continued business partners benefit from our assessment, remediation and training, as evidenced by 78% of continued business partners improving their scores and the total percentage of High Priority factories decreasing to 31% this quarter. 
• We are also seeing positive progress results as a result of sourcing changes: 18 out of 35 (52%) of factories that were dropped were High Priority, and 10 of 15 (67%) of the new suppliers scored Acceptable or better.

SERVICE

• A focused effort to drive service among retail employees (particularly in the U.S., UK, and Italy) significantly increased hours between Q1 2008 and Q1 2009.  This focused effort aimed to take advantage of the fact that retail staff have slightly more availability and flexibility in their schedules during Q1 than they do at other times of the year. 
• The increase in our Benefit Utilization Rate from 16% at this time last year to 28% in Q1 2009 indicates that we engaged more employees in service.
• We altered our 2010 service targets to more accurately reflect the current headcount and capacity of our employees to serve.

To see our detailed disclosure, click on the reports at www.timberland.justmeans.com. Here, you'll find quarterly comparisons to annual data and forward looking targets, description of our metrics and data collection processes, and analysis of this quarter's results. For more information, contact csrinfo@timberland.com.