The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), a global industry coalition that is standardizing social and environmental sustainability performance measurement, has launched the Higg Index Design and Development Module (DDM). The DDM empowers product designers and developers to make sustainable choices at the earliest stage of apparel, footwear and textile prototype design.

Designers have the freedom to minimize eventual environmental impacts of the finished product at the earliest stage of the design process. The data collected through the said DDM which replaces Higg’s Beta Rapid Design Module, helps steer them toward selecting lower impact materials using more efficient construction techniques and considering the complete life cycle of the product.

After completing a simple product assessment, the DDM provides members with a single design score making it easy to compare design concepts and make quick decisions before production. The said DDM provides useful benchmarking and analytics that allow users to compare products or defined groups of products to each other, to company averages, and to industry averages.

Using the DDM encourages continuous improvement by teaching designers and developers where they have a maximum control over the impact and by giving rapid feedback on how to improve their score. The Higg Product Tools include the Material Sustainability Index (MSI) Contributor, the Higg MSI, and now the Higg DDM. Each tool help measure product environmental performance at different stages within the product development cycle, from initial prototype to sourcing raw materials to final design.