Zalando, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) and Higg Co, have announced a new collaboration to accelerate a global sustainability standard in the fashion industry. Zalando is the first retailer to use the SAC’s updated version of the Higg Brand & Retail Module (Higg BRM) to make sustainability assessment mandatory for brands selling on its platform.
As part of this push toward industry-wide change, Zalando will gather comparable sustainability data from its partner brands to understand where the challenges of the industry are both individually and collectively. Higg BRM data will help Zalando identify trends and explore how to develop solutions to drive meaningful and lasting improvement in collaboration with its partner brands.
The Higg BRM is a tool that provides brands and retailers with a comprehensive way to assess their performance around ethical and environmental parameters such as human rights, fair wages or carbon dioxide emissions. Users can organise their sustainability priorities based on the results. All SAC brand and retail members will eventually use the Higg BRM to measure their sustainability performance and progress, making it possible for the apparel industry to compare sustainability at the brand level.
The SAC is the leading sustainability association for the apparel, footwear and textile industry. The coalition’s 250 global members collaborate to develop the Higg Index, a suite of five sustainability tools that assess social and environmental sustainability performance, identify areas for improvement and enable the environmental and social transparency consumers want. Higg Co develops the technology platform that hosts the Higg Index.
