The Higg takes a hit
The leather industry has been waiting in hope for almost two years for the Sustainable Apparel Coalition to suspend the score it has devised for leather in its Higg Materials Sustainability Index. There was little sign of progress until, unexpectedly, the Norwegian Consumer Authority joined the fray.
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) has announced that it is temporarily halting its use of data from its Higg Materials Sustainability Index (MSI) as a “consumer-facing transparency programme”. It has taken almost two years, but this more or less meets an earlier request from the leather industry; it asked that the SAC suspend the generic score it applies to leather and take time to consider newer, more accurate data for calculating leather’s environmental impact.
Launched in 2012, the Higg Index aims to help brands, retailers and manufacturers assess the sustainability of materials for use in footwear, garments and other consumer products. It encourages brands to use the index to compare materials and choose the fibres with the best MSI score. A statement from leather industry organisations in 2020 said that an update to the index, published in August that year, had used “inappropriate methodologies” and “out-of-date, unrepresentative, inaccurate and incomplete data”, which led to leather being burdened with a disproportionately high MSI score.
Leading leather industry bodies, including the International Council of Tanners, the International Union of Leather Technologists’ and Chemists’ Societies, The Leather and Hide Council of America, and leather’s representative body in the European Union, COTANCE, insisted that the MSI was treating leather unfairly. Senior industry figures said they were certain this unfair treatment had resulted in some brands choosing synthetic materials instead of leather.
No change has come yet for the general score the index gives for leather, but large leather manufacturing groups, including PrimeAsia, Sadesa and JBS Couros, have been able to secure a lower score for their own products by amassing large amounts of data and engaging directly with the SAC to achieve company-specific improved scores.
Midway through 2022, help came from a perhaps unlikely source, the Norwegian Consumer Authority. Between February and June this year, the Norwegian Consumer Authority was in dialogue with the SAC and with one of its brand members, Oslo-based outdoor apparel brand Norrøna, inviting them to offer a convincing explanation of a claim Norrøna had made. The brand used data from the Higg MSI to present organic T-shirts in its range as more sustainable than garments made from standard cotton.
Water consumption is the impact category that shows the most significant reduction in environmental impact for organic cotton compared to conventional cotton, the authority said, and Norrøna had presented to its customers an estimated saving of 87%.
In a typically Norwegian understated way, it explained: “As far as we understand it, the real reason behind the substantial reduction in water consumption in global average numbers is because organic cotton farms, typically, are located in places with more rainfall compared to most conventional cotton farms. Thus, the real reason behind the reduction in water consumption is not because organic cotton farms always require less water compared to conventional cotton farms, but rather because of variations in rainfall in the regions where the respective cotton farms are located.”
It was one thing to say that, on average, across the globe, organic cotton offered some advantages, but a different matter altogether to tell the public that these global averages apply to specific garments from specific companies.
Based on this, with the likely impression on the average consumer in mind, it concluded: “The stated reductions in environmental impact of a specific organic cotton T-shirt compared to an equivalent T-shirt made from conventional cotton are, in our opinion, an oversimplified, inaccurate and imprecise depiction of the specific product’s true environmental performance.”
Norrøna and the SAC willingly entered into discussion with the consumer authority but failed to provide any satisfactory justification for the claims. In June, the consumer authority ruled that Norrøna could no longer include these claims in its product descriptions and marketing campaigns, and gave the brand until mid-August to change or remove them. Misleading consumers in marketing messages was in contravention of the Nordic country’s Marketing Control Act, it insisted, and it pointed out that these actions could potentially break the law in other countries, too.
It was far from finished. Turning its scrutiny to the SAC directly, it said that if its member companies, as in this case Norrøna, use data from the Higg MSI as the basis for misleading marketing messages, the SAC could face “possible liability as an accessory”. It told the San Francisco-based organisation: “We would like to remind you that, besides the traders marketing a product, the SAC has a separate responsibility for any marketing that uses the Higg MSI or Higg MSI data. The SAC should take steps to ensure that the use of the Higg MSI by traders complies with the rules of the Marketing Control Act.”
It suggested that the SAC should not allow partners to use the Higg MSI for consumer-facing marketing purposes. It suggested the organisation should inform all members that the index should not be used for this purpose. It issued a further reminder to the SAC that it has the authority to impose economic sanctions on any organisation with proven liability as an accessory. It was this reminder that led to the SAC’s announcement at the end of June that it was temporarily halting its use of data from the Higg MSI as a “consumer-facing transparency programme”.
Chief executive, Amina Razvi, said the organisation remained “fully committed to the use of standardised data to empower better decision-making”, but added that additional challenges arose from translating data from a lifecycle assessment exercise, which is typically what feeds the Higg MSI, into information for consumers. She said the SAC would work with its partners to figure out the best way of doing this translation work and, afterwards, reactivate the programme.
Reacting to the SAC announcement, the secretary to the International Council of Tanners, Dr Kerry Senior, said that leather and other natural fibres had suffered harm to their reputations in the eyes of brands and consumers. He added: “The damage can’t be undone but at least it is now evident that it [the MSI] is a fatally flawed metric. If the failings are true in Norway, they are true everywhere else.”
He expressed hoped that this interruption to the Higg MSI would lead to a shift and said he hoped “a system that properly and fully represents the environmental impact of materials” would come in its wake.
Leather industry hopes rose when Norway’s consumer authority helped shine a bright light on the Higg MSI. The secretary of the International Council of Tanners has described the index as “fatally flawed”.
Credit: Krumenauer/WTP
