Jewelry and Watch Brands Must Be More Transparent, Says WWF

The jewelry and watch industry is still lacking when it comes to sustainability, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said in a report on brands’ environmental performance.

Traceability and transparency are behind where they should be, while subsidiaries of larger luxury groups are doing better than private labels, the conservation charity said earlier this month in a report titled “Time for Change.”

Stakeholder engagement is also limited, according to the WWF, which ranked 21 well-known luxury watch and jewelry brands based on efforts including sustainability strategies, climate action, biodiversity and human rights management.

“Most companies are not yet engaging their suppliers, employees, and consumers in a targeted and comprehensive way in their sustainability efforts,” the Swiss nongovernmental organization (NGO) said.

Many are “still at the very beginning in the areas of water, biodiversity, human rights stewardship, as well as the implementation of circular approaches,” it added.

Subsidiaries of larger businesses have benefited from group-level efforts, the report continued. Kering-owned Pomellato received the industry’s highest score, gaining the rating level “ambitious” alongside LVMH’s Tiffany & Co. and Bulgari as well as Richemont’s IWC Schaffhausen, Cartier and Panerai and Kering’s Boucheron.

However, Richemont watch brands A. Lange & Söhne, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Vacheron Constantin only made the “upper midfield” category, as did Swatch Group labels Omega, Tissot, Swatch and Longines. LVMH’s TAG Heuer also received that score. So did private-equity-owned Breitling and Danish jeweler Pandora.

Family-owned watch-and-jewelry maker Chopard received a “lower midfield” ranking, along with fellow private brands Audemars Piguet and Rolex. The only brand to receive the “latecomer, nontransparent” score was Patek Philippe, another family-owned Swiss watchmaker.

“While the overall sustainability performance of the watch and jewelry sector leaves much to be desired, as the results of the rating show, there are individual brands that are already thoroughly engaged with sustainability issues and have developed approaches and measures that can serve as examples for other industry stakeholders,” the report stated.

The scores represented an improvement from the last report in 2018, when the WWF criticized the industry’s environmental standards and put eight brands in the lowest rank.