Developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), the HIGG Index is a suite of online self-assessment tools that enables brands, retailers, and facilities of all sizes at every stage in their sustainability journey to accurately measure and score a company or product’s sustainability performance. The HIGG Facility Environmental Module (HIGG FEM) is a sustainability assessment tool that standardizes how facilities measure and evaluate their environmental performance, over the year.
The updated HIGG Facility Environmental Module (HIGG FEM) offers apparel, footwear, and textile organizations around the world a comprehensive self-assessment tool for measuring environmental sustainability performance in factories. With the SAC’s new verification program, manufacturers, brands, and retailers can validate the accuracy of information submitted through the HIGG FEM and confidently share their results with supply chain partners.
HIGG index provides a suit of tool which includes:
· HIGG Product Tool
o HIGG Index Product Tools can be applied during a product’s design phase to understand its predicted environmental impact. They can also be used upon a product’s completion for a more accurate impact calculation. HIGG Product Tools offer brands, retailers, and manufacturers’ information to make better choices at every stage of a product’s development.
· HIGG Facility Tool
o Manufacturers use the HIGG Facility Tools to measure the social and environmental performance of their facilities. These modules measure impacts at individual factories, not the parent company as a whole. Users conduct the assessments at least once a year, and these assessments are then verified by SAC-approved, on-site assessors. Benchmarking by facility type allows facility managers to compare their performance against that of their peers. The modules’ aspirational-level questions give manufacturers clear guidance on hotspots for improvement and outline the current best practices in the field. The HIGG Facility tools create opportunities for open conversation among value chain partners so businesses at every tier in the value chain collectively perform better.
· HIGG Brand & Retail Tool
o Brands and retailers play a key role in the long-term success of sustainable practices and communicating the value of sustainable fashion to consumers globally. Consumers are also becoming increasingly interested in supporting brands and retailers that are socially and environmentally sustainable and transparent about these practices. Businesses of all sizes can use the HIGG Brand & Retail Module (HIGG BRM) to measure the environmental and social impacts of their operations and make meaningful improvements. The HIGG BRM also supports these HIGG Index users in sharing sustainability information with key stakeholders, including supply chain partners. This trusted assessment helps brands and retailers around the world establish and maintain strong corporate social responsibility strategies and practices that promote the well-being of workers and the planet. The HIGG BRM assesses a product’s lifecycle structure from materials sourcing through its end of use.
The HIGG Index also provides extensive benefits in adoption to help achieve control and manage their impact for companies wishing to improve and manage their sustainability:
- It has developed global assessment tools and accompanying metrics that allow companies to measure their position and chart a course focused on sustainability while improving processes, production and supply chain management.
- Companies can start from the ground floor with no experience in sustainable initiatives, or they can enter with a high degree of experience from previous programs.
- It allows companies to benchmark themselves within the industry and within like products through standardized metrics.
- The HIGG Index can be done modularly for any of its three focus areas – materials, products or brands – and it can be done ‘a la carte’ for those with a specific area of concern.
- It is flexible and perpetually adaptive and updated as new research and technology progress.
Particularly useful for many companies is the Facility Environmental Model 3.0. With the FEM 3.0 companies can perform a self-assessment of their current state of environmental performance and after getting their self-assessment validated by approved verifiers, factories get a verified report with Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) which identifies key areas for improvement. It can also lay the groundwork for the education of factory management, staff and employees as the initiative gain speed. The FEM 3.0 also includes applicability tests for air, water, wastewater, and chemicals to assure that each facility can build their sustainability into its operation with the correct blend of needs.
We provide end to end solution for HIGG Index. Our experts are highly experienced to conduct HIGG consultancy from research, analysis, report writing to train up your in house employees about the procedure in details. We have developed solutions for the project to achieve maximum scores in HIGG FEM 3.0. For that, we have designed the whole consultancy service in three different packages.
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