Higg Index controversy exposes deep cracks in fashion’s sustainability efforts

This article is part of our Vogue Business Membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to Member-only reporting and insights, our NFT Tracker and TikTok Trend Tracker, weekly Technology and Sustainability Edits and exclusive event invitations, sign up for Membership here. The future of how fashion measures its environmental impacts might be up for grabs after a spate of controversies hit the industry’s leading assessment tool. That has some experts worried, while it brings relief for others, who say it’s about time. The Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI), fashion’s leading environmental assessment tool, has had a tough few weeks: in mid-June, the Norwegian Consumer Authority warned H&M and Norwegian brand Norrøna that using the Higg MSI data in marketing claims about their products’ sustainability credentials can “easily be considered misleading”, as it is partly based on outdated research data. The week prior, a New York Times story cast a spotlight on the Higg MSI and its critics, arguing it “strongly favours synthetic materials made from fossil fuels over natural ones” and that it is used to justify brands’ use of synthetic fibres “as the most sustainable choice”. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which develops the Higg Index, subsequently suspended its consumer-facing transparency programme, and is commissioning an independent review of the Higg MSI. In a statement, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition said that it recognises the challenges inherent both in collecting comprehensive information on such a large and complex industry and in translating lifecycle analysis data to consumer-facing information. With the transparency programme on pause, it said it plans to work with programme partners to determine next steps. “We know how important it is that our members and the wider industry have trust not just in our mission, purpose and approach, but also the data and insights that sit behind our tools,” the statement reads. The unfolding dialogue has called the integrity of the tool, and the methodology behind it, into question. However, it also exposes an issue that’s bigger and more fundamental than the Higg MSI itself. What it has revealed — or reinforced, depending on who you ask — is that sustainability is more complicated than the fashion industry has been ready or willing to acknowledge. The questions and criticisms that have been raised about the Higg MSI are many and complex, but they largely boil down to one key point: what level of detail can and should a fashion company be accountable for when it’s making decisions that have implications for sustainability? “People say, ‘We have to do something, have to start somewhere’, but they don’t understand how consequential and influential the Higg data is — and it’s not getting us the end result we want,” says Caroline Priebe, founder and director of sustainability at The Center for the Advancement of Garment Making. “The runway [on climate change] is now a driveway. We don’t have time to mess up. We really don’t.” Higg CEO Jason Kibbey is the first to admit that the tool does not account for all the metrics that determine a product’s environmental footprint. That was intentional, he says, because the goal was to create a platform to allow users to compare different materials against one another, and to ensure the information was digestible. “Our goal is to try to bring as much information forward as possible, to make it as comparable as possible. As you add more impact categories, you create more gaps because there's not necessarily information on every category.” The lack of information about an environmental problem, though — microfibre pollution, for example, a little-studied category in the early days of the Higg MSI — doesn’t make it less significant. Omitting categories because they are understudied or too complicated to distil into a simplified chart, say environmental experts, not only lets companies off the hook for not accounting for them, but does nothing to incentivise or encourage the industry to fill in those data gaps. Fixing the gaps Critics say the role of the Higg Index, and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition behind it, in steering the industry’s efforts around impact assessment may have been pioneering early on, but fashion brands face more pressure than ever as the climate crisis grows more urgent and technological capacity more robust. That leaves no room for excuses when it comes to how little fashion actually knows about where and how, exactly, its impacts are generated, says Abdullah Choudhry, co-founder and chief impact officer at data platform Arbor, a company that says it can aggregate the data necessary to produce a more complete picture of a product’s environmental footprint across its full lifecycle. “Climate change is a big problem. Having data around it is not,” he says. “Saying that the data is not available in 2022, when the whole world is trying to focus on climate change — it's not available because the fashion industry [hasn’t prioritised it]. If we're going to run automated cars on the road and we can send rockets that don't require people to the moon, we should be able to calculate impact the same way that we calculate any other thing in our industry.” The ordeal over the Higg MSI shines a light on deeper questions about fashion’s sustainability efforts that need to be answered for the sector to stand any chance of meeting its own ambitious goals or those laid out in the Paris climate agreement. Is it even reasonable to simplify and aggregate environmental impact data into a simple chart or database? That can help expedite decision-making, but can be surface level at a time when experts say the industry needs more nuance, not less. Should such databases instead include as much detail as possible — which risks overloading people with more information than they can handle? Are the people who make sourcing decisions for brands qualified to make them with sustainability in mind? And who gets to decide what data, from which company or farm or dyehouse, and in which geography using which method of production, is seen and by whom? Over the next couple months, Arbor — which advocates such as Priebe have applauded for being more thorough and transparent than its predecessor data platforms — is opening private betas with small brands, such as Canadian childrenswear label Nudnik to the public, according to Choudhry. In general, large brands are far more reticent to engage with the company than small brands, he says, which have been unable to afford participating in the Higg MSI and are eager to engage with Arbor and the access to data and transparency it promises. While the Higg MSI data and methodology is under review and the transparency programme on pause, Higg CEO Kibbey says a number of variables, including how policy proposals in the EU proceed, will determine next steps. He concedes that Higg could have done a better job of contextualising the data it provides. Among the major criticisms it has faced are that it promotes the use of synthetic materials over natural fibres and the data used to compare materials is taken out of context to justify decisions rather than inform them. Kibbey says these contentions are false, and insists the tool has moved the industry in the right direction. “With any of these tools, you still have to use your brain,” he says. “I look at this as — you look at a normal sustainability professional, if they're looking at improving their own company or their supply chain or anything they do, you use these tools to understand your impact, and then work on where you can improve it and what are the decisions you can make.” For critics, that leaves too much room for interpretation, which is the underlying problem in how fashion has approached sustainability in general — using its own definitions and setting its own priorities, rather than (until recently, and only in some cases) being guided by science. “[The Higg Index] can’t control how designers use their tool. They can say whatever they want about what the data is used for. That doesn’t mean that’s how it’s going to be used,” says Priebe. She’s not opposed to iterative improvement, but says the common refrain to not let perfect be the enemy of the good does not apply here. “I would argue we don’t have the good. If data is bad, the good isn’t real.” Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. Clarification: Clarifies differentiation between the Higg Index and the Higg company. More from this author: Inside Gucci’s Artlab: Where Alessandro Michele’s designs come to life — sustainably Recycling old cotton into new clothes: The major innovation finally coming Recycled plastic swimsuits aren’t as green as you think

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