Hey Stirling, I?ve been doing this carbon reduction thing for a while now, so let me explain the problem in Billabong?s approach.
Turning a major surf label into a low carbon brand is a very expensive exercise, I?m pretty sure someone has run the numbers at Billabong and come up with a figure in the order of around 10 million dollars plus. To maintain low carbon numbers through your own purchasing and manufacturing process you would then be limited to using like minded low carbon providers in your own supply chain. Read - no more sweat shops in Asia?.cont This would probably push up the price of a pair of boardshorts by around 20% which erodes current profit margins. It's a big gamble to hope the public is going to be passionate enough about the environment to continue to find the price break of the brand appealing and hence there is a risk to sales figures. If you did this however you would actually be truly assisting climate change. High emission manufacturers are deprived of business and would ultimately close, the ongoing funds you would need to push into offset programs would truly benefit the environment.
Again, that's all really expensive...a far cheaper option is to have one product in a line branded as green - market that heavily and rely on the halo effect to pass over the whole company. That's basically what Billabong does, but you're not alone. The flow on problem to your approach is that other brands see the short cut you have taken and do exactly the same thing. The net result is that no one will commit to true reduction as it becomes deemed too risky.
It has to be an all or nothing approach, that's just how carbon reduction works. Has Billabong got the balls for it, someone in the surf industry has to go first? If you don't then please just do nothing, because the irony is that your 'start' just makes it harder for everyone else to do it properly.
