Higg, a sustainability insights platform for consumer goods, is developing partnerships with Bluesign and ZDHC (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals) to accelerate the use of environmentally safe chemicals among global brands and manufacturers.
The announcement brings two of the world’s leading voices in sustainable chemical management to Higg’s data and analytics platform to continue the expansion of data sources available on the Higg platform.
The production of textile chemicals has a significant impact on the global environment. According to a recent report conducted by ZDHC, between six and eight percent of all greenhouse gasses can be attributed to chemicals produced in the textile industry. Individually, Bluesign, ZDHC, and Higg help consumer goods businesses improve how chemicals are used in their design and manufacturing processes. The use of hazardous chemicals in the production of apparel garments also harms garment workers who handle them and has the potential to cause serious adverse health impacts on the end consumer.
As part of the developing partnerships, the parties aim for more advanced integration of data for their customers to help textile manufacturers improve chemical management, reduce the risk of water toxicity, better understand and address human health impacts, and eliminate chemicals of concern from upstream production processes.
“Reliable and universally consumable data is the best weapon we have for advancing sustainability performance as an industry,” said James Schaffer, chief strategy officer, Higg. “It’s not a battle we can fight alone. Partnering with Bluesign will allow us to help our shared customer base enrich their insights, make better chemical purchasing decisions to reduce the negative impacts of manufacturing on worker health and safety, and protect the environment through better resource management.
“Soon, customers will be able to take advantage of tighter integration between Bluesign and Higg assessments,” Schaffer added. “At the same time, through our developing partnership with ZDHC we’ll be able to explore more powerful, scalable solutions for joint customers that need to improve chemical usage and wastewater treatment across their entire supply chain.”
Through the collaboration, Higg and Bluesign intend to develop stronger data and services offerings for their customers to eliminate redundancies and support Bluesign’s impact services. The companies will explore how mutual customers can share data between the platforms, with Bluesign facilities gaining access to Higg’s facility tools.
In addition, Higg will work with ZDHC to bring ZDHC’s facility improvement resources to Higg customers, including the Resource Efficiency Module, which is focused on GHG emissions, water and pollution.
Learn more at www.higg.com.
