Higg partners with Bluesign and ZDHC

Higg, the sustainability insights platform for the consumer goods industry, announced that it is forming collaborations with Bluesign and ZDHC (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals) to hasten the use of ecologically safe chemicals by major brands and producers worldwide. The news continues the growth of data sources available on the Higg platform by adding two of the top voices in sustainable chemical management to Higg’s market-leading data and analytics platform.

The global ecology is significantly impacted by the production of textile chemicals. According to a recent study by ZDHC, chemicals used in the textile industry are responsible for six to eight percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Individually, Bluesign, ZDHC, and Higg aid companies that produce consumer goods in streamlining the use of chemicals in their planning and production stages. Additionally damaging to those who handle them, the use of hazardous chemicals in the manufacture of clothing has the potential to have detrimental effects on the end user’s health.

The newly announced developing partnerships between the parties seek to achieve more sophisticated data integration for their clients in order to assist textile manufacturers in improving chemical management, lowering the risk of water toxicity, understanding and addressing the effects on human health, and removing questionable chemicals from upstream production processes.

James Schaffer, Chief Strategy Officer, Higg, said that reliable and widely consumable data is the finest tool they have for enhancing sustainable performance as an industry. They cannot win this struggle on their own. By collaborating with Bluesign, they will be able to support their mutual client base in gaining deeper insights, improving chemical purchase choices to lessen the negative effects of production on worker health and safety, and improving resource management to save the environment.

Schaffer added that customers would soon be able to benefit from closer integration between Bluesign and Higg evaluations. They will also be able to explore more potent, scalable solutions for their shared customers that need to enhance chemical usage and wastewater treatment throughout their whole supply chain, thanks to their growing cooperation with ZDHC.

Higg and Bluesign hope to remove duplications and promote Bluesign’s impact services through their new partnership by creating superior data and service offerings for their clients. The businesses will investigate how users of both platforms may exchange data, with Bluesign facilities getting access to Higg’s facility capabilities. Additionally, Higg and ZDHC will collaborate to offer Higg clients access to ZDHC’s facility improvement resources, including the Resource Efficiency Module, which focuses on GHG emissions, water use, and pollution. To enable manufacturing clients to complete Higg’s FEM assessments without having to enter their data again, Higg is eager to cross-map its data with both ZDHC and Bluesign.

Frank Michel, Executive Director, ZDHC, said that Higg is one of the most complete sustainability platforms in the textile sector. They push the industry toward circular practices by working together to encourage ethical manufacturing practices and exchanging technology and knowledge. In the end, this reduces the environmental impact of fashion.

Daniel Rufenacht, Bluesign CEO said that concentrating on chemical management is vital to developing a cleaner supply chain and combating climate change. To promote change and reduce the negative consequences of dangerous chemicals throughout the product life cycle, it is crucial to work with all stakeholders. A further step in that direction is their collaboration with Higg.

The industry fragmentation is decreased, and the supply chain’s environmental performance is accelerated throughout this exciting new phase in these connections. Stronger industry collaboration is required, such as the deeper linkages between Bluesign and ZDHC, in order to capitalize on the knowledge of key players in the chemical management arena. As a ZDHC Contributor at the moment, Bluesign performs the role of a third-party verifier, approving the chemical goods’ ZDHC MRSL Conformance Levels and collaborating closely with ZDHC on methodology, structure, and criteria. In compliance with the ZDHC MRSL V2.0, more than 19,000 bluesign® APPROVED chemicals currently have achieved ZDHC MRSL Conformance Level 3, which is the highest level currently attainable. The ZDHC GatewayTM, the largest database in the world devoted to enabling safer chemical product options for the textile, leather, clothing, and footwear industries, has also included these chemical goods in its database.