SGS joins Sustainable Apparel Coalition

Geneva-based SGS, a company providing inspection, verification and testing services, has now joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) to improve labour conditions across the world.

SAC was formed to answer calls from governmental, private and non-profit organizations, such as the European Commission (EC) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and to prepare good performance standards for supply chains across the world.

The SAC had, earlier, developed an environmental assessment tool with the Higg index Facilities Environmental Module (FEM). The FEM V3 is currently being piloted by the industry as a reference tool to assess the environmental performance of facilities. The purpose of this tool is to drive improvement. Now, SGS has partnered with Target to develop a first onsite verification tool and the protocol of Higg FEM V2.

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“One brand cannot change the industry, but all brands working together can,” said Xavier Vital, Global Environmental Services Manager, SGS, Sustainability Services.

“SGS is proud to contribute to the alignment of the practices on Environmental Assessment and is excited to announce the same level of commitment to align the social and labour practices. The company is willing to achieve the same benchmark with labour performance assessment in order to reduce audit redundancy,” the company said in a statement.

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A big part of raising global labour and environmental standards is transparency. Hence, the Higg Index is an open source, and is available for download to members as well as non-members, including the general public, the statement added.

SAC currently has 49 members representing a third of all clothing and footwear sold worldwide. Both SGS and SAC have been recognized for their leadership in sustainability, SGS by the Dow Jones Sustainability World and Europe Indices (DJSI) and SAC with the C K Prahalad award.