The Higg Index is a web-based tool for measuring the environmental impact of sports, outdoor clothing, fashion clothing and footwear across the industry value chain.
It was developed jointly by many actors in the industry and is now being maintained by the "Sustainable Apparel Coalition", whose members already represent about 40 percent of the global textile industry.
Currently the Higg Index is a purely voluntary, internal industry tool that provides a practical unified methodology for compilation of all relevant environmental data and evaluation, so that the companies plan and initiate improvement measures.
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»As an industry solution, the Higg Index is an important step in making the use of resources in the supply chain transparent and achieving savings« Hilke Patzwall, VAUDE CSR Manager
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The Higg index is currently being tested in an EU pilot project on products’ environmental footprints. In the future, it will be used as a consistent indicator for sports, outdoor and fashion products by which consumers can recognize the environmental impact of different products and make informed purchasing decisions.
VAUDE has been involved in drafting the Higg Index and in several pilot applications. We are currently using the Higg Index internally to identify important areas of activity within the product life cycle as well as for the development of our own criteria for greener products (see Green Shape).
A global database is planned using the Higg index in which various stakeholders of the textile supply chain can post their consumption data. In this way, we hope that VAUDE suppliers will make their consumption and waste transparent so that we can determine the true impact of our products’ manufacturing. We are actively working on this project.
| GRI: | EN1 |
| GRI: | EN2 |
