The partnership began a little over a year ago when Chouinard was asked by then Wal-Mart head Lee Scott to give a presentation to 1,200 of his buyers on vetting suppliers for sustainable practices.
Hence the Gap's code of "Social Responsibility", which was introduced after the revelation by the NLC in 1995 that workers in Central America were earning only 12 cents for each $20 Gap shirt they made.Now the Gap has more than 90 "vendor compliance officers", often recruited from NGOs, to vet prospective suppliers and to ensure decent labour standards among current suppliers.
Local councils should vet their suppliers to find out if they have committed tax avoidance, and "discriminate" against those that have, a leading charity has said.
For both companies, a key tool for vetting paper suppliers is a global organization called the Forest Stewardship Council, whose main headquarters is in Bonn.
He says it took him a year to find and to vet the suppliers, many of them based in Europe, where health and safety standards and the rights of employees are vigilantly policed.
Some critics say that the scale of Li & Fung's operations and the speed at which it shifts production from one site to another give owners less incentive to improve their factories and make it difficult for Li & Fung to deliver on its pledges of carefully vetting its suppliers.
Of the hundreds of suppliers vetted by the company, only a few met its sustainability standards.
She is developing in-house textiles and manufactures exclusively in London while working with UK based suppliers, each vetted to ensure quality, locally-sourced materials.
The trust said it has now committed to providing a secure central store for hard drives and other media, reviewing the process for vetting potential IT suppliers, obtaining the services of a fully accredited ISO 27001 IT waste disposal company, and making progress towards central network access.
She said new suppliers needed to be located and vetted, and testing was needed to ensure the replacements were also safe.
Another, Kepco Engineering & Construction, designs them and is tasked with inspecting parts from suppliers and vetting the safety certificates they include from testing companies.
