French retail and luxury conglomerate PPR — parent of Gucci brand — has unveiled a new sustainability initiative designed to require the company’s brands to not only do less harm, but to generate social and environmental benefits in the long run.

WWD reports that the ‘PPR Home’ plan will be endowed with an initial budget of 10 million euros (about $14.2 million currently), with its evolution indexed to the firm’s dividends.

PPR Home is our group’s contribution to a better world, by developing innovative and sustainable initiatives for our different economic models that rely on our creativity and our imagination in order to influence our lifestyles and inspire others to follow us in the long term,” PPR chief executive officer François-Henri Pinault said at the press conference in Paris.

This news is so important that we publish the inaugural measures as outlined in WWD:

• The launch of the Creative Sustainability Lab, a partnership with Cradle to Cradle that will focus on developing products and retail pilots that integrate and apply objectives such as environmental and social concerns for PPR’s luxury labels — including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga — and sporting goods firm Puma.

• The complete offset of the carbon dioxide emissions generated in 2010 by PPR’s luxury group, Puma and PPR’s headquarters, evaluated at 98,729 tons, through the purchase of carbon credits from San Francisco-based company Wildlife Works’ Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) offsetting project in Kenya. By comparison, PPR estimated its total CO2 emissions across all divisions in 2009 at 452,492 tons.

• Puma’s upcoming publication of what it claims is the world’s first environmental profit and loss (EP&L) account statement, as a first step toward measuring the full environmental impact of the activities of Puma and its suppliers.

PPR sold its French Printemps store in 2006 and is now focused on Gucci, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Sergio Rossi, Boucheron, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen (50%) and Stella McCartney (50%), as well as other brands and mail order companies.

The European companies are light years ahead of American retailers, based on our reading of their corporate websites, when we last wrote about Gucci’s philanthropic initiatives in Africa and America.