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Can a Bag Save the World? The Mulberry Made to Last Manifesto

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To mark our 50th anniversary year, Mulberry announces the launch of the Made to Last Manifesto, laying out an ambitious commitment to transform the business to a regenerative and circular model, encompassing the entire supply chain, from field to wardrobe by 2030.

To achieve this commitment the Made to Last Manifesto focuses on six key actions for change:

Launching on World Earth Day, 22nd April 2021, with a digital campaign, the Mulberry Made to Last Manifesto asks a series of bold, challenging, and sometimes uncomfortable questions, that we respond to with honesty and intention, even if we don’t have all the answers.

Over the last 50 years, Mulberry has been at the forefront of designing and manufacturing leather goods in the UK, but in 2021 we are taking this moment to ask the question ‘Can leather ever be sustainable?’. To answer this, we are looking at every Can a Bag Save the World?

The Mulberry Made to Last Manifesto part of our supply chain to embed principles of regeneration and circularity at every stage.

Acknowledging the environmental issues associated with cattle farming, Mulberry believes the continuation of a long and successful association with leather is dependent on achieving full traceability from farm to finished product, allowing us to put in place a network of organic and environmentally conscious farms to supply the hides that create our leather. This network will provide the foundations of our commitment to a regenerative and circular supply chain by 2030.

Mulberry has always been a brand built on community and locality, and since our inception we have remained committed to making more than half of our products in our Somerset factories.

Today those factories are carbon neutral and every person working in them is paid a real Living Wage, but proud as we are of these achievements, we know we have to go much further to make transformational change, and that’s why we are asking the question, ‘Can you make a blue bag green?’. Later this year Mulberry will release our first locally made ‘farm to finished product’ bags using the world’s lowest carbon leather. This collection will represent the future of the business, establishing a model that can be replicated with a network of trusted partners and underpins our commitment to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2035.

Our transformative approach to leather sourcing will be reflected in the way we innovate new solutions across our business, from integrating recycled nylon and regenerative organic cotton into our products to continuously assessing and reducing the environmental impact of our packaging and our physical store network.

In asking, ‘Can you teach an old bag new tricks?’, we highlight our commitment to extending the life of every Mulberry product through repair, renewal, and repurposing. This commitment is at the heart of our circular proposition, influencing the way we design and manufacture, and the services we offer our customers.

The Repairs Team at The Rookery, one of our Somerset factories, are masters of restoration, breathing new life into more than 10,000 bags every year, with leather and hardware archives going back over 35 years.

Through the Mulberry Exchange we match authenticated and beautifully restored classics with a new owner, and every one of our bags, be they 50 years or five months old, can find a second, third or even fourth home with another member of the Mulberry community. This platform was launched in store in 2020 and is going digital on mulberry.com in April 2021, alongside a recently launched partnership with Vestiaire Collective, making resale a core pillar of Mulberry’s circularity strategy.

If the day comes that a Mulberry bag really has reached the end of the line, we will still buy it back and using an innovative energy reclaim system, unique to our strategic partner Muirhead, a member of the Scottish Leather Group, power the production of a new bag, ensuring that the line never ends, it just becomes a circle.

The Made to Last campaign brings these questions and more vividly to life through a series of portraits, moving image and interviews with internal and external advocates for the regenerative and circular approach that the manifesto promises.

These protagonists include chef, restaurateur and soil activist Gizzi Erskine; artist, writer and entrepreneur Wilson Oryema; sustainable advocate and founder of yehyehyeh, Shaway Yeh, as well as environmental and agricultural specialists, craftspeople from our Somerset factories, and more, who each engage in the key questions the manifesto asks.

The Made to Last Manifesto promises that the Mulberry business and a Mulberry bag represent a commitment to regeneration, renewal and reimagination. Keeping this promise requires a culture change across the industry, the supply chain and amongst customers, a radical shift in both the way things are made and the way they are used, and it ultimately leads us to ask the question: ‘Can a bag save the world?’. We know real change is born from a willingness to ask ourselves the hard questions and to keep seeking meaningful answers. Can a Mulberry bag come with a promise of regeneration, renewal and reimagination? If it can, and we believe it can, then yes, a bag can truly be part of making things better.

“At Mulberry we have already taken significant action to embed sustainability across our business, but today we offer our commitment to a programme of transformative change, embedding principles of regeneration and circularity across our entire supply chain. We are committed to creating a hyper-local, hyper-transparent ‘farm to finished product’ sourcing model and whilst we are at the beginning of this transition, I am immensely proud of my colleagues and the work done to launch the Made to Last Manifesto. We look forward to the challenges ahead.” — Thierry Andretta, Mulberry CEO

The Mulberry Made to Last Manifesto launches on World Earth Day, 22nd April 2021.