After working quietly to set sustainability goals and begin pursuing them, The North Face is now detailing its trek toward a greener supply chain and operations in the company's first corporate social responsibility report.

The outdoor apparel and gear firm wants at least 65 percent of the fabric it uses to conform to the bluesign sustainability standard for textile production by 2015. The company says it is advancing steadily toward that goal: After two years of working with major suppliers to apply bluesign guidelines, 27 percent of the fabric used in The North Face products meets the standard.

The figures are part of the progress charted in the CSR report for The North Face that is being published today. The company also is releasing a series of videos that highlight joint efforts with key suppliers.

Here is the first video in the series:

"We've taken the approach of going after our biggest impacts … and those are in our supply chain," said Adam Mott, corporate sustainability manager for The North Face.

Production and manufacturing of materials account for about 75 percent of the environmental impact of the company's products, said Mott, who gave GreenBiz.com a preview of key elements in the report and talked to me about what prompted The North Face to start telling its sustainability story.

The company's program began about five years ago with goal setting, creating the means to take basic measurements and embarking on a monitoring process. Then it started collecting data and circulating progress reports internally.

It's not that there wasn't a story to tell, but in an industry where sustainability is often showcased by an item or a product line, The North Face's strategy doesn't lend itself to an easily told product tale.

In addition to focusing on the business aspect with the greatest environmental footprint, The North Face holds the view that "the further upstream we go, the more impact we have on [easing] the environmental impacts," Mott said. So by that reasoning, the greatest benefits result by improving the sourcing and manufacturing of core materials that are common to the greatest amount of the company's products.

The argument for leveraging impact and scale across the company's spectrum of products grows stronger when you consider the number of materials that can go into any one item. Mott pointed to the firm's Atlas Triclimate jacket as an example. "It has 44 accessories and trims and 12 different fabrics," he said. By focusing on such a complex item, which is typical of the company's expedition-quality gear, "you could end up chasing down a lot of rabbit holes."

Next Page: The early results of The North Face's strategy