Breaking Barriers

Moore & Giles’ Path to Red List Free

Beverly McAuley, the Senior Director of Sustainability and Education at Moore & Giles, has advocated for material health and transparency for years. Her passion for material safety led Moore & Giles to be the first leather company with a Declare label in 2017. And now, because of her efforts, they have over a dozen Declare labels, all Red List Free, and most third-party verified. 

Beverly’s dedication to regenerative design and safe products transcends disclosure. By working with her suppliers to address hazardous chemicals within the supply chain, Beverly is changing the tanning industry. By leading with empathy and collaboration, she is safeguarding end users and protecting tanneries from harmful exposures.  

What made you decide to push your suppliers for the removal of Red List ingredients and to publicly disclose those ingredients?

Historically, people have trusted that the food we eat and the products we use are safe. Through the years, we’ve seen negative impacts resulting from that way of thinking, like using asbestos, lead, and Teflon in nonstick pans. Now, it feels like we are in an era filled with the desire to have the information to allow us to take control of our destiny and ultimately our legacy, through our decisions. That requires a certain level of transparency, whether it’s the food we put in our bodies or the products we put in our buildings. Moore & Giles became an early adopter and the first leather company to achieve a Declare label as our format of choice for ingredient transparency. 

Our process to achieve full material disclosure has been a journey—easy with some and requiring a bit more patience with others—but through gathering that deep level of disclosure, we’re now able to screen the chemicals against the Living Building Challenge (LBC) Red List to learn more about their impacts. That’s all meant to provide a background of what got us to this point.

Our process in general, is to ensure that our products are compliant with specific regulatory lists, like Cal Prop 65 and REACH, in addition to restricted substances lists like the LBC Red List. When entering a product and its ingredients, if we see any red flags, we’ll notify the supplier and request that they remove the ingredient and substitute it with a safer chemical. That’s simply become our standard procedure. I assume if a substance is on the Red List, we should remove it. It’s the right thing to do. It’s better for all of us. The whole process has opened our eyes to exploring other ingredients, even if they’re not flagged against the Red List. We are approaching transparency from a place of curiosity by asking what each chemical does, if we must use it, and if there might be a better way. This method has led to some inspiring side effects, with our suppliers now doing the same thing, and seeking out innovative options. If we can replace a chemical with something that’s safer and will still create the same product, why not? 

What was the process you used to convince your suppliers to share their ingredients and remove Red List ingredients?

There is historic evidence that leather is older than fire, next to wood and water, leather is the oldest material humans are still dealing with in the built environment. There’s a long history there. Some of these tanneries, our suppliers, are family-owned, multi-generational, over one-hundred-year-old companies. When we started requesting information, it was unexpected and new because no one else was asking. 

We originally sent a supplier survey, asking for full material disclosure for all of the products we purchased from each supplier as well as another five-page document full of questions for them to answer. We hit it hard, received a couple of responses… and a lot of crickets. It was too much, not only because of what we were asking but also the tech side was confusing across our global supply chain. So, we corrected our course and backed up a bit. 

We worked on educating our suppliers on the why. Why are we asking for this information? Who else is asking for this (clients, project architects, etc.)? What are we going to do with it? It was important to make it clear that it wasn’t just Moore & Giles asking for this level of disclosure, but that there was a return on investment connected to the ask. This informative approach supported the fact that we were doing this for a good reason.

When we started, some clients didn’t even know what Declare was. But now, some design libraries won’t specify a product unless you meet certain requirements like the Declare label. The industry is evolving to support these requests a lot more than it did when we began.

After educating on the why, we provided step-by-step training sessions to guide suppliers through logistics. We recorded a virtual training on how to fill out the forms and how to give full material disclosure. The most important thing that was really concerning suppliers was that they were worried they were giving away all their secrets. Consider your great-grandmother and her most loved recipe. If she is like my Great-Grandmother, she is protective of her legacy and will leave out an ingredient so that no one ever makes it as good as she did. (True Story). 

Giving up that secret recipe and potentially handing it over to competitors is a common concern for many suppliers when it comes to transparency. So, we worked with Toxnot, now 3E Exchange, to help our suppliers understand how they can make an ingredient proprietary to protect their recipe while still providing the ability to screen against hazard lists like the Red List. 

Putting their fears at ease and requesting one product per supplier really started to shift things in motion. Once we achieve one Declare label with a supplier, they seem to get it and feel confident doing more! Today we’re receiving regular product disclosures and tanneries are much more open to the process. 

I often think about an experience I had with one tannery. Something had been flagged on the Red List, and when we reached out to them to remove that ingredient, they responded later to thank us. That doesn’t happen very often. But they reached out and told us that no one had questioned it. They’d always made it that way and never had a reason to change because it’s what worked, it’s what people purchased, and it’s just the way it was. And that right there is the way humans have been operating, whether it’s the food we buy, the clothes we wear, or the products we specify—it’s business as usual. However, in this case, when we questioned their ingredients and asked if they could seek a safer alternative for one product, they found a much safer ingredient and incorporated that change throughout their entire product offering. This created a shift in the way of thinking and changed the way we deal with that tannery now. If they make a change or find something innovative and sustainable, we’re their first call. We celebrate these positive shifts together, which is important for all of us to remember to do, as we navigate our way to a sustainable and regenerative future. Today, this tannery is investigating regenerative farming solutions, upgrading to more energy-efficient equipment, and using renewables, in addition to material health. It is so rewarding to look back and see how that chemical change request was the tipping point to where we are today, with all parties looking through a lens of curiosity to ask, “What better solutions might exist?”.

What have been the impacts on your business and your consumers since removing Red List ingredients from the supply chain?

One important aspect to consider while you’re looking for sustainable attributes that we learned early on is aesthetic. The quality and aesthetic of the product needs to be as similar as possible to what the client is used, or better. You can be as sustainable as you want to be, but if it’s not desirable, it typically won’t be specified. Thankfully, the ingredient changes on our products haven’t had a negative aesthetic impact. We can’t tell the difference. Our clients can’t tell the difference and there is no change in quality or performance. The switch is a success and has been a no-brainer and encourages designers to consider sustainable products in their projects. 

The architectural and design industry has become more aware of the Declare label, and it’s recognized on green building platforms and scoring systems, helping our products’ recognition. Many design libraries, like the Genslers, the Perkins & Wills, and others who are making their own material specification requirements are also recognizing Declare Red List Free labels, emphasizing third-party verification, which is so important, and something we believe in and incorporate. 

All of this effort has led to more specifications resulting in purchases. That’s bottom line, return on investment right there! Some companies are still in that space where you have to prove ROI before you can do anything from a sustainable perspective. And for those folks, I can say that we’re there, we’ve done the work, and we’re experiencing results. Sure, it’s taken a lot of work and building trust to shift our age-old industry to this level of transparency. But now they’re just proud to be part of it and join hands with us to lead the way forward! 

Having a healthy portfolio of third-party verified, Red List Free Declare labels is important to us, and it will continue to be part of our plan. We’re beginning to see our competitors come along behind us. Paving the way is invigorating, but it can also be a challenge because rather than navigating an existing path, you are instead making the effort and investment through trial and error to create it. I always say celebrate your trailblazers in every market because they’ve done the work. Ultimately, we’re doing the work so that people will follow. My only question is: what’s taking so long?

Any final thoughts you want to leave with our readers?

Take the risk, BE the leader, and blaze those trails! I’m happy to talk to anyone about my process and the value beyond ROI that having a Declare label has brought our team and our tanneries.  

We will never fully realize the extent of the ripples of the positive impacts that are created from decisions like these. And that has to be okay. To companies that need proof of return on investment before change will happen: you are falling behind. We must consider and discuss the cost of doing nothing. When determining the cost of the materials we specify, purchase, use, and ultimately discard, we must shift to a culture of including the impact on our planet, human health, and future generations of using those materials and their ingredients as part of the cost, multiplied by the impacts created by frequent replacements if it is a low-cost, short-term product. We must choose well, not often, making verified sustainable choices that support environmental and human health and take an active role in a circular economy. These key elements need to become part of the ROI equation. For now, we might not know what the final numbers are, but we do know that there is an impact to every decision that we make, creating our legacy in real-time. The question is, will the legacy you leave behind be a good one?