The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), and its two members H&M and Norrøna, has announced pausing its use of the Higg Index after a report by the Norwegian Consumer Authority (NCA) found it was misleading consumers.
Amina Razvi, CEO of SAC, said in a statement that the organisation will be working closely with the NCA and other stakeholders and regulators to ‘better understand how to substantiate product level claims with trusted and credible data’.
The SAC will be carrying out a third-party review of the Higg Materials Sustainability Index (MSI), a module of the popular Higg Index suite of tools that scores the environmental impacts of materials, which was last evaluated almost 7 years ago and will be working on a programme alongside other organisations to update its data.
Started in 2011, the Higg Index is facing criticism following a report from the NCA that said the system appears to have broken guidelines under Norway’s Marketing Control Act, which targets green claims made by businesses, and could potentially see it banned from being used throughout Norway.
