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Celebrating the launch of the Higg Facility Environment Module (FEM) 4.0 tool, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Worldly hosted a series of webinars for global stakeholders. The presentations illustrated how the updated Higg FEM tool marks an industry milestone in sustainability reporting to meet pressing environmental issues and industry standards, positioning the Higg FEM 4.0 as the leading assessment for environmental performance in the consumer goods industry.
Facilitated by Loretta Tam, vice president of Customer Success at Worldly, the presentation kicked off with Scott Raskin, chief executive officer of Worldly, who conveyed the urgency of value chain participation in light of increased regulatory disclosure. Higg FEM 4.0 aligns with key global standards — including the GHG Protocol, the SBTi, and the ZDHC Roadmap to Zero — to drive emissions reductions and reduce duplicative reporting.
Amina Razvi, CEO of SAC, shared how Higg FEM 4.0 was redesigned to meet industry needs, offering broader coverage of critical environmental issues, such as groundwater and soil contamination, to help facilitate improvements on a global scale. It also features improved and streamlined usability by including targeted questions relevant to facilities. Additionally, Higg FEM 4.0 unveiled a new anomaly detector designed to flag inconsistencies on-platform. The result, Razvi shared, is a tool that delivers better data quality and a more accurate environmental assessment.
Jeremy Lardeau, VP of Higg Index at SAC, presented on the specifics of the tool’s design during the first webinar, which was timed for participants from the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa; on the second, timed for participants from the Asia-Pacific region, this information was shared by Angela Ng, director, Higg Facility Tools at SAC. They were joined by John Armstrong, chief technology officer at Worldly, who presented on user experience, and Eustaquio Brant, environmental program manager at Bestseller, who shared the brand’s experience with Higg FEM 4.0.
The participants emphasized that the teams engaged 140 representatives across 12 Member Expert Teams (METs) to collect stakeholder feedback, spending two years on the process of building Higg FEM 4.0. Stakeholders on the METs represented 62 manufacturers, 57 brands/retailers, 10 service providers, and five affiliate members, and provided insights that helped to shape the FEM framework, scoring methodology, question content, and more, to build a tool that meets relevant industry standards and protocols. Finally, the webinar sessions outlined how Higg FEM 4.0 was tested by more than 400 users, who provided feedback within the platform. After a Q&A session, each webinar concluded with the understanding that Higg FEM 4.0 empowers users to identify, prioritize, and scale sustainability efforts.
As members transition to Higg FEM 4.0, the SAC and Worldly will host additional member and user webinars and Office Hours throughout the month.
