What is the HIGG Index – and why need to care about it?
What is it?
The HIGG Index was developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition in order to help brands become more sustainable and not least to measure and score their development within sustainability and carbon footprint.
The index gives brands an overview over their business and enables them to make improvements to protect the well-being of factory workers, local communities, and the environment. Brands are ranked on a scale from 0 – 180 (don’t worry if your score is low to begin with, it’s your progress that counts).
The best part of HIGG is, that it gives the consumer an opportunity to receive a “real” picture of the level of social- and environmental responsibility with their favorite brand. So, a better comparison tool, which is based on – yes – self-assessments, but also validating visits from third parties.
The Higg Index will help you answer these questions:
What is our overall supply chain footprint?
What are all the products that make up that footprint?
How do we prioritize potential opportunities to make these products in a better way to lower their footprints?
Why do you need to care about the Higg Index?
Apart from the obvious benefits of having a scale that everyone follows, and you can measure your development up against, now there is another very good reason to start worrying about your ranking on the Higg Index.
A big retailer has just announced that in the future will require all their suppliers (brands) to follow the Higg Index. In other words, if you are a supplier to this large online retailer, you must fill in a questionnaire and get documentation for your score on the Higg Index.
This is great news as it means that the large online retailers are beginning to really understand that we need action in our industry. However, they have taken a rather ambitious approach.
What does this mean in practise?
This is all good and well, but what does fill in this questionnaire to get a score on the Higg Index really mean? How much work does this entail?
A lot. It is not just a questionnaire with yes/no answers and with questions that you would know how to answer. They are deeeeeep, my friend – deeeeeep!
To answer them honestly and with effort put into the detail (which I would suggest you do), you will need to collect a lot of data, that you had no idea you would need.
(fiber mapping, supplier mapping (beyond tier 1), CO2 emissions, waste management systems etc.)
As mentioned in the beginning, you will probably score really low. But the good thing about the HIGG index, is that it is not a pass/fail approach, but rather an opportunity to see where you are at now and set yourself goals for further development.
I am unsure whether HIGG index have made efforts to meet the small- and medium sized companies and taken into consideration the resources it requires from them to fill in this questionnaire and prepare the data for it, but I hope they have!
Otherwise, there will be a lot of work in the pipeline for brands who wish to sell their products on this big online platform. I hope that the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, who is behind the HIGG index, will provide training for the companies. It will definitely be necessary, to fully understand the purpose of the questionnaire.
But HEY, such great news that the one “certification” that have the opportunity to become widespread in the fashion industry, is now being pushed to the market. And it is always hardest the first time, the next couple of years when you do it, it will be so much easier ;-)
“I would rather have one very ambitious common goal in our industry, that we all work towards, than many un-aligned goals that leaves everyone confused and in despair of clarity”
SO, bring it on – HIGG index!