EC8: Development and impact of infrastructure investments and services provided primarily for public benefit through commercial, in-kind or pro-bono engagement

Anvil’s operations and activities have a significant economic impact in the communities where they are located.  In addition to local employment, Anvil’s business supports a wide range of local services such as transportation, food service, material inputs, packaging suppliers and subcontractors.

Anvil supports several community initiatives that are designed to “improve the health and well-being of its employees and change communities.” These programs include educational programs and school improvements and job retraining programs. Read more about these programs in the Society section, under “Community”.

Anvil’s investment and services for the public include tens of thousands of donated t-shirts for fund-raising, including certain annual programs we support: national telethons benefiting physically challenged children, organizations promoting environmental awareness and remediation, organizations supporting family farms, health initiatives and relief agencies.

See below EC9 for additional job training for the community.

EC9: Understanding and describing significant indirect economic impacts, including the extent of impacts

Our operations employ over 4,200 people and support a much wider network of people who work in our supply chain.  When we conducted our product life cycle assessments, we analyzed the number of people it takes to make a t-shirt – not just our employees – but in our entire supply chain, starting with all the people who work for the companies that supply our cotton farmers with seed, equipment and other inputs or services all way through to the sales person in the store that sells our t-shirt to a consumer.  We conducted an informal inquiry of our supply chain to see how many people were involved in each step of the manufacturing process.  It’s a long list of dedicated people who craft a single t-shirt.

How to measure the indirect economic impact to this network of people and communities is a much more difficult endeavor.  We hope to be in a position to report our progress in this area in future updates to this Report.

One area where we have worked on improving our indirect economic impact is in the area of wages and the payment of a “living wage” or , in the case of our cut and sew facilities, a negotiated wage under a collective bargaining agreement.

Another area is the payment of a premium to the Farmers that convert from conventional to organic farming practices.  In 2010, the latter premium was tested during unprecedented cotton prices but we continued to pay a premium to our organic farmers above conventional cotton prices.  We were able to do this only in collaboration with the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative.   We continue to analyze the economic positive impact of an organic farm over a conventional farm to that local community and continue to believe that organic farming can provide a better return for farmers albeit we recognize organic farming requires more attention, paperwork and labor.

While we do not performed formal impact studies in these areas, we are starting to do evaluate the impact of our expanded community job training program which started in 2008 and expanded in 2009 and 2010. The results of the training were positive although we did not have as much participation as we had projected.  In total 103 participants learned a skill by logging in a total of 4,540 training hours.

Community Job Training Program in its Third Year.