Higg, and Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) have welcomed the release of a four-year long study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley into the impact of the Higg Facility Environmental Module (Higg FEM), one of the core sustainability assessment tools on the Higg Index platform. Higg is a leading sustainability technology company.
The Higg FEM tool is rapidly being adopted by the apparel, footwear, and textile industry. The study was based on open access to data provided to researchers by the SAC. The independent research, conducted between 2015 and 2018 concludes that, while the Higg Index has laid an important foundation for factory data collection and measurement, increased transparency and more robust incentives between buyers and factories are critical to enabling its full potential, according to Higg.Higg, and Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) have welcomed the release of a four-year long study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley into the impact of the Higg Facility Environmental Module (Higg FEM), one of the core sustainability assessment tools on the Higg Index platform. Higg is a leading sustainability technology company.#
“We absolutely agree that scores should be transparent. Open and credible data has always been the ultimate goal of these industry tools, and we are getting closer to this being realised. Manufacturer members of the SAC can already communicate their performance scores and, in the coming months, all verified Higg FEM assessments will be shareable,” SAC executive director, Amina Razvi said.
“When it comes to incentives, this is an industry-wide problem that requires an industry-wide solution. The Higg FEM is a measurement tool that offers data which companies can leverage to make decisions that incentivize factories. Ultimately, the data is only useful if brands and retailers use it to drive stronger sustainability outcomes for their companies and in factories where their products are made,” Razvi added.
Higg and SAC teams are already using the recommendations from this research to make newly released features, such as factory score transparency, available to users and to inform new versions of the tool and its future functionality.
“Data verification has scaled significantly in terms of total number of verifications completed since the research concluded. We’ve also seen the difference between self-assessed and verified data results get smaller and smaller and factories now have access to benchmarking to see how they performed relative to their peers. The organisations say they appreciate that the research concludes that the Higg Index has laid an important foundation for factory measurement. We’ve seen important changes since the report was published factories can now share their scores transparently and additional brands are incorporating Higg FEM scores into purchasing decisions but we want to see more,” Jason Kibbey, CEO of Higg said.
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