Leading global lifestyle apparel company Kontoor Brands– having two of the world’s most iconic consumer brands, Wrangler® and Lee® –has announced a new supply chain coalition of denim leaders to improve critical data incorporated into the Higg Material Sustainability Index (MSI), the apparel industry’s most widely used tool to measure and assess the impact of products on the environment.
In a statement, the company informed that as a part of these efforts, Arvind Limited, India’s leading lifestyle and fashion conglomerate, and Cone Denim, a global leader in denim authenticity and sustainable innovation, will share key data from the denim dyeing process that is currently not factored into the Higg MSI.
The companies plan to roll out the updated Higg MSI tool for all apparel brands by summer 2022.
Dhruv Agarwal, Senior Director of Global Innovation, Sustainability, and Product Development at Kontoor Brands said, “Data-driven decisions produce the best outcomes. We believe the Higg MSI is an invaluable tool for assessing the environmental impact of processes and materials utilised in our products. Through this work, our industry will be able to have a more complete picture of denim’s impact, and our product development teams will have better insight into the environmental footprint of our products, empowering us to make more sustainable design choices.”
Kontoor, Arvind and Cone are committed to building upon the denim-related information within the Higg suite of tools to further standardise measurements of value chain sustainability and provide greater transparency to apparel companies during product design and development.
“We are excited to explore and advance tools and resources, like the Higg MSI, that align with our customers’ goals to design and produce sustainable apparel,” said Steve Maggard, President of Cone Denim, adding“We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded companies, such as Kontoor, to bring transparency to the supply chain. Cone Denim has made considerable capital investments in our manufacturing focused on creating responsible and sustainable products and look forward to verification of our initiatives’ results.”
