With sustainability becoming the buzzword apparel brands looking to make lesser impact on the environment now have access to more material data to help them reach sustainability goals. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), an industry-wide group working to reduce the environmental and social impacts of products around the world, released a new and improved version of its Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI) where TENCEL® fabric scored better than around 70 per cent of textiles measured.

Originally developed by Nike, the scoring tool was adopted by the SAC in 2012. The body has since updated the methodology, technology and data to create an easy-to-use public tool that measures and communicates the environmental impact of thousands of materials used in creating apparel, footwear and home textile products. The Higg MSI’s purpose is to provide information about materials and their impacts from extraction through manufacturing in a user-friendly way, creating a benchmark and allowing design teams and supply chain partners to pick less harmful options during design and development. It uses a common language around materials for simplified communication.

TENCEL® fabric, made from the Lenzing branded fiber product of the same name (its generic name is Lyocell), scored 34 on the Higg MSI. By comparison with other fiber materials combined with their default fabric production and dyeing and finishing, a hypothetic unbranded (generic) Lyocell fabric receives 44, silk receives 128 and cotton gets 88. Lyocell’s score is based primarily on data Lenzing submitted to show how TENCEL® ranked versus other commonly used fibers. The score, however, does not represent any specific producer.