Levi Strauss & Co. Chief Financial Officer Harmit Singh and Chief Operations Officer Liz O’Neill discuss the company’s ambitious sustainability plan. They show Emily Chang how Levi’s is executing a shift from hardware to software in its manufacturing processes, on Bloomberg’s “Chief Future Officer.”

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In 2020 Levi’s issued its first standalone sustainability
report. It covers environmental social and governance issues

outlining programs priorities and principles and setting
ambitious targets for performance.

It will be up to Harmeet Singh and Chief Operating Officer Liz
O’Neill to execute the plans they helped devise.

And I worked together a lot on figuring out what is the what’s
the strategic direction how are we going to get there and how

are we going to invest in order to actually make that a reality.
What falls under the CEO umbrella in the C S O umbrella. And

where did those over overlap. Well sustainability reports and
through me. So I have this supply chain as well as the

sustainability team. But nothing happens without the CFO. The
CFO is imperative to this. And honestly right now we’re in such

a big transformation as an industry as we try to transform. We
need the help of the CFO to really help us figure out what are

those focus areas and how do we distort our resources and our
investments to those areas that are going to matter most. Every

year we do a strategic business plan.
One of the few companies where ESG and sustainability is the

cornerstone of us to to do GIC plan and thinking about saving
all this money in negotiation. Are you going to drop it to the

profitability or are you going to invest for the long term.
Think about this place right. People ask me is this get getting

the payback. I say you can measure this from a payback. If 80
percent of our innovation is coming from here we are building

for tomorrow. You know this is a very easy answer. You’re
getting the payback. And I think that’s the discussion that

happens on a regular basis. So you know Neal showed me how that
discussion is driving Levi’s through a major shift from hardware

traditional resource intensive manufacturing processes to
software. They gave me an iPod and told me to design the jeans

of my dreams.
You can come down here and we all love our damaged and

destructive jeans. Yes we do. You can of damage like an ad
damage. But that wasn’t even the coolest part. So what do you

customizing will come to life. OK. So we’re gonna see my damages
on there.

I guess that’s been happening in real time
like that. A distressed pair of Levi’s that just needs one short

wash to be ready to wear. This technology is already in use and
already delivering results. We’ve reduced the amount of water by

almost 90 percent across most of our product line over the last
10 years saving billions of litres of water. I’m finding new

ways to finish the genes that are just much more sustainable.
How long can you recycle the water for. How long before you have

to dispose of it. Well we with the laser finishing that we use
in many of the factories we can recycle the water virtually

endlessly. So on the right. These are traditional washing
machines. They use a lot of water. On the left is an ozone

driven washing machine no water. And so it washes the pans.
Exactly. And using this technology all our factories now use

that technology. And if you go back and look at how much water
we have saved since 2011 is approximately 13 billion litres of

water.