Making with waste

By crafting with waste, we’re working to avoid the creation of new materials—a process that accounts for 38% of the fashion industry’s greenhouse gas emissions*. Our Upcrafted leathers are ingeniously crafted from the scraps left over from the production of Coach leather bags. Our Coachtopia Leather is made from at least 50% recycled leather scraps from tanneries. Other waste-based materials in Coachtopia include resin made with 70% recycled industrial plastic, cotton made from 95%+ recycled content and 100% recycled polyester.

*Source: Fashion on Climate, McKinsey & Company, 2020

Renewable materials

We’re investing in the future by using and developing responsibly sourced, renewable materials that have a reduced impact on the planet compared to conventional alternatives. These include leathers from farms using regenerative agricultural practices—those that that help rejuvenate grassland and increase biological diversity, soil health and productivity—as well as innovative materials created from renewable resources, like EVA made with sugarcane biofuel and ink pigment made by carbon-absorbing algae cultivation.

Making to remake

We’ve developed a range of circular design details—including screw-back hardware, removable handles, binding constructions and monomaterial design—which, when incorporated in products, help them to be repaired unmade and remade with less damage to their materials than in conventional products. This helps materials to remain in use at their highest value. We’re also exploring new techniques for proportional design that help us to minimize scraps when cutting patterns for first life as well as when products are recut and remade for second life.

Testing and learning

We’re working to keep improving the way we design for multiple lives through an ongoing feedback loop between our craftspeople, designers and suppliers. Through our Coach (Re)Loved program we are continually identifying the aspects of traditional luxury leather craftsmanship that make circularity at scale challenging. These learnings feed directly into Coachtopia, where our teams research and prototype new methods of designing and crafting for ease of disassembly without sacrificing durability or functionality.

Trade it in, whenever

As part of our commitment to keeping our products in use and out of landfill—and creating a community in which they are passed between owners to live multiple lives—we’ll take back any Coachtopia product regardless of its age or condition. You can trade in pre-loved Coachtopia products at Coach Retail stores in exchange for a credit—calculated by the Coach team according to the product’s original price and current condition. Not ready to part with yours yet? Then you can keep it looking its best by making the most of our leather care and repair services.

Connect your product

Each Coachtopia product has a unique digital passport that holds details about its impacts, materials, design and history—which is updated each time a lifecycle event, such as repair, trade-in or recycling, occurs. This not only allows every owner to learn more about their individual Coachtopia product and its impact, but means that when a Coachtopia product comes back to us, we have better information about where it is on its circular journey, to help us best prepare it for its next life.