For the watch industry, the clock is counting down on a fresh challenge. In 2025, the first filings are due in the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (C.S.R.D.), which obliges some companies to disclose their environmental and social impacts as well as their financial details.
Some experts say the pending demand has led much of the watch industry to “greenhushing” — downplaying its communications on what is called E.S.G., the environment, social and governance framework that companies use to monitor sustainability and ethics.
But why?
“There’s fatigue in the marketplace about sustainability,” said Diana Verde Nieto, the author of “Reimagining Luxury: Building a Sustainable Future For Your Brand” and the co-founder of the corporate education platform Edify Collective. “It has moved from a passion for doing the right thing to the technicalities of how the right thing should be done.”
“Companies are greenhushing,” she continued. “They have to be more conscious, but also the backdrop is volatility in the market, uncertainty around the U.S. election and consumers moving from stuff to experiences. E.S.G. is out of fashion, but the reality is this will all change next year.”
The deadline varies, but companies in the European Union that have more than 250 employees and annual net sales of more than 50 million euros ($54.3 million) must file during 2025 or face fines or administrative sanctions. Those also vary, depending on the country where the company is headquartered. (To strengthen the effort, the directive was supposed to be added to the national laws of all E.U. member states by July, but only a handful, including France, Italy and Sweden, have yet done so.)
By 2029, companies that are not based in the European Union, but which generate more than €150 million a year there, also will have to report.
“Up to now, big corporations have been doing sustainability on compliance,” Ms. Verde Nieto said. “But this is no utopia any more. The first year of C.S.R.D. reporting will be 2025, which means that in 2024, some businesses will have to do it and company directors will be liable for it. Sustainability will need to be taken out of the silo and embedded in every single person of every single organization.”
The changes are coming at the same time that the industry faces a sharp sales downturn. According to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, the value of exports plunged 12.4 percent in September compared with the same month in 2023. How much focus would — or could — brands give E.S.G. activities in such a crisis environment?
“There has been a big slowdown from luxury companies, especially from big groups, in their E.S.G. push,” Benjamin Teisseire, a luxury sustainability expert in Switzerland, wrote in an email. “Some are still refusing to actually talk about it.”
Breitling, however, has continued to talk about it: In September, the company published its third annual sustainability report. “It’s incumbent on all brands to increase levels of transparency, while moving with the necessary caution,” said Aurelia Figueroa, the chief sustainability officer at Breitling, which is majority owned by the private equity entity Partners Group. “Many brands have walked back their commitments. This practice has picked up this year.”
In contrast, IWC — which once was at the vanguard of the industry’s sustainability movement and, in 2007, said it had become the first carbon-neutral watch manufacturer — no longer produces an individual sustainability report. A spokesman for Compagnie Financière Richemont, IWC’s parent company, wrote in an email that the group had been “taking a consolidated and harmonized approach to reporting,” referring to a nonfinancial report that was issued in June.
The watch industry hasn’t been alone in cooling its environmental efforts. COP29, the annual climate change conference scheduled to begin in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday, is expected to have about 40,000 delegates, sharply down from the 2023 attendance of 85,000.
But Ms. Verde Nieto said the attendance decline actually was a sign that businesses were taking sustainability seriously: “They now have to look at how sustainable they are, and one way of doing this is to fly less and invest less in going to things like COP.”
The Times asked three institutions in the watch industry about the current situation and how they expect the future will unfold. Here, in edited and condensed form, is what their representatives said:
Iris Van der Veken
Executive director and secretary general of the Watch & Jewellery Initiative 2030 (W.J.I.2030), an organization founded in 2022 by Cartier and Kering to encourage a collaborative approach to E.S.G. issues
The initiative has about 70 members now. What moves are they making toward sustainability?
Brands are doing very well on setting targets and working on Science-Based Target initiatives, but for their suppliers it’s much more challenging.
For brands, the biggest scope of emissions is Scope 3 [greenhouse gases produced by indirect sources, mainly suppliers] and a lot of them are now sharing knowledge and working towards exchange of ideas. But anything we do is about quality, so it will take time. At the W.J.I.2030, we’re building nature road maps for the industry so that as regulations move, companies are ready.
And we’re heavily focused on the gender agenda. We would love to see more women at the top, and so we have a collaboration with U.N. Women. Are brands buying from women entrepreneurs or companies that integrate women as a strategic imperative?
Some brands have set ambitious targets, while many will find that new regulations force them to make changes they’re not ready for. Can the industry hit its targets?
Only by working together and collectively with suppliers. Brands need education, compliance and regulation, which means developing internal capabilities. It’s our duty to share what we’ve learned and so we’re open-sourcing our tools so that even if companies are not members of the initiative, our road maps are available.
In your view, do consumers want watches with strong E.S.G. credentials?
We now have a new consumer that is more activist and more conscious. They still look at creativity, design and craftsmanship, but behind this needs to be a story of accountability and integrity. This is now a nonnegotiable.
The Alpha Generation has experienced conflict and the climate disaster and they will be much more conscious of what they’re buying, so the trend will accelerate.
As the C.S.R.D. goes into effect next year, will 2025 be a tipping point for the industry?
I wouldn’t call it that. But it’s an important milestone in the journey of sustainability.
The pace of regulation change over the past five years has been so fast and we need to bring everyone along on the journey. Companies have to look not just at their impact but how they affect the world.
What I would say is that when leading brands take action, it has a really positive effect on the rest of the value chain.
Aurelia Figueroa
Chief sustainability officer, Breitling.
What does it take for Breitling to deliver a sustainability report?
It’s a huge effort to write a sustainability report. We did it fully in-house and over 200 people contributed to it. It leaves us with proximity to the topic.
Are you hitting the targets you outlined in previous reports?
We’ve made strong progress on traceability and one third of our collection that features gold and diamonds is now fully traceable. Our goal is to issue a traceability NFT for all main collection products containing gold and diamonds by the end of the financial year 2026.
According to your report, Breitling’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions — those produced by your own operations and those produced by your energy providers — have decreased, but your Scope 3 emissions have increased significantly. Why?
It’s mainly because of changes in the emissions factor and how those emissions are accounted for. We were using the best figures we had, but those have now changed. The new information helps us better define the reduction pathway.
What impact will the rollout of the C.S.R.D. have on Breitling?
New legislation is going to shake industries to the core, ushering in an era of transformation. It’s a very welcome introduction because it gives a thoughtful structure and means we can align the targets we’ve set to it. Certain subsidiaries would be party to it from 2025, resulting in the 2026 reporting cycle, based on the size of our turnover in European countries.
Are you collaborating with other Swiss watch companies on sustainability issues?
We have a number of bilateral and multilateral collaborations with our supply chain partners, for example in our lab-grown diamond supply chain where we’re working with partners to cofinance solar PV [photovoltaic] projects. At the moment, I’m not at liberty to disclose our multilateral collaborations with other watch brands, but there is an awareness of the need to pool resources. There’s a sense of urgency.
Do you think the watch industry is greenhushing?
In general, there are some aspects of greenhushing: staying quiet, among other things, due to the risk one may feel of being accused of greenwashing. New regulations are coming into force on an almost monthly rate and so a lot of industries are treading carefully. We all need to find a level of meaningful transparency in line with the introduction of requirements.
What impact do you think your work has had on changing consumer perceptions of Breitling?
We have first-mover advantage and that’s important. Our targets have been validated by the S.B.T.i. [Science-Based Targets initiative] and this has helped brand value and desirability.
We’ve also defined a prosperity narrative, supporting community collaborations and technologies that lead to meaningful action. In 2023, we contributed 1.7 million Swiss francs to social and environmental projects.
Talking about all this allows a deeper knowledge of the Breitling product, which is very fulfilling to consumers.
Virginie de Meuron
Head of Public Relations, Rolex. The company is owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, headquartered in Switzerland, so it will not have to file a C.S.R.D. report until 2029.
What measures has Rolex taken this year to improve its E.S.G. profile?
Rolex achieved some major milestones throughout 2023 and 2024. Importantly, the brand completed its third carbon footprint analysis and formalized the targets to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Rolex submitted its targets to the Science-Based Targets initiative, which approved them in 2024. In total, across all scopes, Rolex will achieve a 25 percent reduction in its absolute emissions by 2030, compared to 2021.
What about its Scope 3 emissions?
In 2023, Rolex’s total carbon footprint was 1,996 kilotons of carbon-dioxide equivalents, 99 percent of which was attributed to Scope 3, due, in particular, to the procurement of precious materials including gold, platinum, palladium and silver.
Rolex’s total footprint had decreased by 37 percent between 2022 and 2023, mainly due to decisions related to gold procurement that were responsible for 31 percent of this reduction.
Reducing air transport holds a prominent place in the company’s road map. Several projects are targeting this reduction, such as the regional production of sales and marketing accessories as well as printed materials, or the use of sea, road or rail transport whenever possible.
Finally, a special effort was made to reduce the weight of transportation packaging to minimize its impact on transport-related greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2020, Rolex has been developing a new presentation box with improved environmental credentials for the delivery of its watches to its end customers and is now rolling it out. The introduction of this new eco-friendly presentation box guarantees a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions related to its life cycle.
Why is the company taking these steps?
For Rolex, reducing and/or improving the impact of its business amounts to ensuring its longevity. Since its creation, Rolex has been driven by a passion: to design and manufacture watches that stand the test of time. The quest for quality and excellence — the foundation of the brand’s philosophy — has always required it to operate in a responsible and sustainable way.
Rolex has posted its E.S.G. strategy on its website. Has that had an effect on consumer perceptions of the company and on sales?
Rolex will publish its first sustainability report towards the end of 2024 on rolex.com and will update the website’s sustainability content on a regular basis.
Consumers purchasing a Rolex are familiar with the brand’s values and Rolex is not looking to sell more watches through its sustainability commitments, which are built into the company philosophy and have contributed to its growth and identity.
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