As the fashion industry takes stock of its role in the climate crisis, and consumers have become more environmentally conscious, certification programs are on the rise. The Higg Index may be one of the most widely-used, but it is far from the only sustainability initiative that, critics say, actually distract from fashion’s environmental concerns. “Certification in general is sort of this false promise, and it is this license to greenwash,” said George Harding-Rolls, a campaign manager at not-for-profit Changing Markets Foundation.

The Higg Index is a widely used suite of tools created for the fashion industry to assess the sustainability of the materials used in their products. It is maintained by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) and their technology partner Higg. The SAC has about 250 member brands.

The index has been criticized on a number of fronts:

The system favors synthetic fabrics, which are made from fossil fuels, positioning them as more sustainable than natural fabrics. Synthetics are the backbone material of the fast-fashion industry. The SAC says, however, that comparing these materials is not what the tool is meant to do.

There isn’t transparency in the underlying data. Access to some data is available only to companies that pay a fee.

Its ties to the fashion industry are too strong. Many of the founding retail members of the index, and members of the SAC itself, are the largest brands in fashion. This could chill the coalition’s willingness to criticize underperforming brands, as those companies also fund them.

It can be misleading. This is what the Norwegian Consumer Authority (NCA) decided on June 16, 2022 when it banned the use (Norwegian) of the index in marketing, and issued a warning to H&M to curb its use on their website. “SAC should not allow its partners to use the Higg MSI for marketing purposes towards consumers,” the consumer authority wrote to SAC after their ruling.

The analysis of environmental impact does not include an item’s full life-cycle. It doesn’t follow a garment from farm (or oil well), through manufacturing and use, to rubbish pile. It includes only the impact of the materials until the production of the fabric is completed. It also fails to include important sources of emissions, like from the manure used in cultivation.

In 2021, a consumer-facing portion of the Higg suite was created, which allows shoppers to view the environmental impact of individual items, including how it compares on greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuels, water use, and water pollution. That consumer-facing effort was suspended on June 27.

Photo by Karina Tess on Unsplash