Sustainability

Making the kit we sell accounts for most of our carbon footprint, so most of our work is on what our own kit is made of and how long it lasts.

The figures here come from our Annual Report and Accounts 2026. Our financial year ends on the Saturday nearest 31 January, so FY26 is the year to 31 January 2026.

The year in figures

Repairs

Hale waterproofs and packs carry a lifetime repair promise, and Club members get free repairs on the rest of their Hale and Swift kit. Eight new benches opened in FY26, six more are due by the end of January 2027, and we aim to repair 75,000 items a year by FY29.

New Hale kit is designed to be mended. Zips come out without unpicking the seam tape, buckles clip on, and we keep spare parts for at least seven years after a line ends. Technicians log the commonest faults on each product every month, and the product team reads the log before reordering. How our repairs work.

Hale Again

Hale Again sells pre-owned and refurbished Hale and Swift kit in 14 shops and online. Club members can bring in Hale and Swift kit they no longer use for a credit voucher worth up to £40. A team of five at Huntworth cleans, reproofs, repairs and grades each item, which then sells for 40% to 60% of the new price. Anything we cannot resell is stripped for parts for the repair benches. Ten more shops will stock Hale Again by the end of FY27. Shop Hale Again.

Taking PFAS out

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) were for years the standard way to make outdoor fabric shed water. They do not break down in the environment, and regulators in the UK and Europe are moving to restrict them. Every Hale waterproof has had a PFAS-free finish since Spring Summer 2025, and the Swift range has been PFAS-free since Spring Summer 2026. An independent laboratory tests samples from each new range.

PFAS-free finishes need reproofing more often. Hale waterproof labels carry reproofing instructions, our benches will wash and reproof a jacket for you, and you can do it at home with our reproofing products.

Recycled fabrics

A unit counts towards our 68% when its main fabric, or at least half its material by weight, is recycled polyester or nylon, organic cotton or another material that meets our standards. The biggest change in FY26 was moving Hale waterproofs to recycled nylon face fabrics.

Recycled fabric strong enough for tent flysheets and the lightest Swift shells is still hard to find, and those products stand between us and our target of 85% by FY28. We are testing recycled ripstop with two mills for the Spring Summer 2027 tents.

Packaging

92% of our online packaging can be recycled at the kerbside. Single-use plastic in own-brand packaging is down 61% since FY22, and we aim for 75% by FY28. Hale clothing ships in paper bags, and in FY26 we stopped using plastic hangers for own-brand kit sent to our shops. Most of the plastic left is protective film on footwear and tent poles.

Heat pumps, solar and vans

Emissions from our own buildings and vans (Scope 1 and 2) fell 19% in FY26 and are 54% below FY22. Our target is a 90% cut by FY30.

Heat pumps went into nine more shops during refits, so 22 now have them, and new shops open with heat pumps and no gas connection. Gas heating remains in 19 shops, mostly older buildings, and at Hale House. The 1.9MW solar array on the Huntworth roof generated 1,640 MWh in its first full year, about two fifths of the site's electricity. Six of our nine delivery vans are electric, and the last three will be by FY28. We do not count carbon offsets towards any target.

Emissions from our suppliers

More than 99% of our footprint is Scope 3, the emissions outside our own buildings and vans. Four fifths of it comes from making our kit, mostly the energy used to spin yarn and to dye and finish fabric. We estimate Scope 3 at 168,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) in FY26, up 2% as sales grew. Per £m of gross profit, which is how our target is set, it fell 5.5% and is 23% below FY22. We aim for a 55% cut by FY32 and net zero across our value chain by 2045, targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative in 2024.

Our top 30 suppliers report their emissions to us every year, and 12 of the 26 fabric mills behind them now get at least half their electricity from renewable sources.

The people who make our kit

Hale and Swift kit is made in 112 factories in nine countries, and every one signs our Ethical Trade Code. We are behind on living wages: five of our 18 strategic factories pay at or above a recognised regional living wage on average, against our target of all 18 by FY30. In June 2025 an audit in Taiwan found 46 migrant workers who had paid recruitment fees for their jobs. The factory repaid all £61,000, and our code now says the employer pays these costs.

The Path Fund

The Swift & Hale Path Fund takes 1p from every Club purchase and a share of hire income. In FY26 it gave £420,000 to 37 footpath, access and outdoor education projects, including gates in place of stiles near Okehampton and path repairs on the Cleveland Way and the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. A panel of colleagues, Club members and a trustee from The Open Paths Trust, our charity partner, chooses the grants. Colleagues also gave 2,100 volunteer days.

Read the full report

The sustainability section of our Annual Report and Accounts 2026 has every target, our energy and carbon data and how we measure it. Our climate-related disclosures follow it, and you can download the whole report as a PDF.