What is Higg Index FEM Certification?
The Higg Facility Environmental Module (FEM) is a sustainability assessment tool of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC). The SAC, founded in 2010, is a coalition of brands, retailers, manufacturers, and other stakeholders who are committed to reducing the environmental and social impacts of apparel and footwear products around the world.
The Higg FEM standardizes the measurement of environmental performance of manufacturing facilities in the apparel, footwear, and textile industry. It is designed to help these facilities understand their environmental impact and identify areas for improvement.
The Higg FEM informs brands, retailers, and manufacturers about the environmental sustainability performance of their individual facilities, so they can make improvements that reduce negative sustainability impacts.
Higg FEM module having online practice-base qualitative questions to gauge Environmental sustainability performance and drive behavior for improvement. Higg Index is not a certification or any audit program once the company complete their assessment against the existing system and performance then request to verifier company to conduct the verification against the online filled assessment by company. It is totally scoring based program in order to reduce audit fatigue; a facility can post and share its Higg index verification results on an online platform and share it with brands and retailers. Only one Higg index verification is necessary, it will be recognized by all SAC members, allowing factories to focus their efforts on the implementation of improvement actions.
The first version of this Higg index certification was developed in the year 2012, named after the Higgs Boson search which was discovered in the same year. The second version which was released in the year 2015 included social labor and convergence project. These changes aim to establish a uniform standard for auditing labor conditions as well as social impact in the field of apparel and footwear.
Impacts Measured:
The Higg FEM standardizes how facilities can measure and evaluate their yearly environmental performance. This tool provides a clear picture of the environmental impact that a manufacturer and its facilities are having upon the environment and the world as a whole. The Higg FEM helps manufacturers, brands, and retailers identify and prioritize opportunities for performance improvements.
Higg FEM Assesses:
- Environmental Management System
- Energy/Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Water
- Waste
- Wastewater
- Air Emissions
- Chemicals Management
The objective of Higg Index (FEM) assessment is to reduce the environmental impacts of apparel and footwear products around the world and build trust in the Higg data so that it can be more effectively used in decision-making and consumer labelling while eliminating redundancy in assessments. Higg Verifications will furthermore enable manufacturers to spend more resources on capacity building and change the mind-set from compliance to performance improvement.
What are the benefits of Higg Fem?
- Improve environmental performance.
- Helps to identify sustainability issues immediately.
- Emphasis & improves the overall social labour practices.
- Assurance regarding 100% compliance to Social Labour practices.
- Accurate scoring & easy sharing of data with external interested parties.
- Helps to avoid the waste of time & cost required for audits.
- Give the access in the international market which support Higg index.
- Meet the relationship criteria of new customers.
Why choose Ikon Compliance Consultant?
IKON COMPLIANCE CONSULTANT team can guide you about the Higg Fem certification process and help you to achieve it.The methodology of system implementation covers Initial review, planning followed by implementation, and documentation. IKON COMPLIANCE CONSULTANT is one of the leading Higg index certification consultants in Kanpur, India. Our team offers active support and hand-holding to organizations to achievesuccessful system implementation and positive audit results.100% documentation support is offered to expedite the implementation process.