Technology platform Higg, which enables consumer goods companies to measure, manage and share the social and environmental impacts of their value chain, has launched a program for comprehensive traceability across the global supply chain.
The Higg traceability program, a global collaboration beginning with technology partners atma.io by Avery Dennison, FibreTrace and TrusTrace, aims to put into motion global brands’ efforts to track the hidden impacts within their manufacturing processes, ensure fiber integrity and understand, communicate and accelerate product sustainability.
The program is designed to give consumer brands the ability to identify and share the supply chain provenance of billions of items with their upstream value-chain partners, and highlight and disclose sustainability information on their own and other e-commerce platforms to the public and other stakeholders.
“Consumer goods businesses face a tremendous urgency to accelerate sustainability improvements and need comprehensive tools and contextualized data that can illuminate untracked areas of the supply chain,” Higg CEO Jason Kibbey said. “Together with some of the world’s most advanced traceability innovators, we’re bringing robust, new capabilities onto the Higg platform to enable brand and retailer customers to understand and trace product certifications and provenance.”
Avery Dennison launched the atma.io venture and its connected product cloud to serve as the foundation for sustainable, trusted connections between every item, company and person.
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FibreTrace is an advanced transparency technology business combining physical and digital traceability with the power of authentication, aiming to empower the global textile industry to reduce its impact on the environment. FibreTrace formally launched to market in March in partnership with Reformation, and today works with the largest producers of carbon positive Good Earth Cotton, recycled polyester, responsible viscose, recycled cotton and linen, virgin wool and linen to get more responsible and verified fiber choices to market.
TrusTrace offers a platform for supply chain transparency and traceability within fashion and retail, and has quickly become the foundation for some of the most ambitious sustainability programs in the world.
“We’re thrilled to partner with these organizations, all of whom are committed to advancing transparency and sustainability, and each of whom brings unique capabilities needed by the industry,” Kibbey said. “Higg is laser-focused on aggregating quality environmental, social and governance data to provide a single source of truth for consumer goods industries. Partnering with best-in-class traceability innovators is a critical step in helping our customers make better informed sustainability decisions.”
Max Winograd, vice president of atma.io and connected products at Avery Dennison Smartrac, said atma.io connected product cloud is built on Avery Dennison’s digital ID technologies that combine physical and digital worlds.
“In collaboration with the Higg platform, we are helping reimagine supply chains for the greater good by combining item-level traceability data from atma.io together with environmental and social impact data from Higg,” Winograd said. “This gives brands and retailers a complete view of their supply chain and an opportunity to provide accurate sustainability insights to consumers and other key stakeholders.”
FibreTrace brings an advantage to the program because the technology is implemented at raw fiber source, tracing and verifying it throughout the global supply chain in retail, in addition to collecting primary farm data that is third party verified, adding a new layer of data and depth, Shannon Mercer, CEO of FibreTrace, said.
“Without transparency we can’t improve the impact of the global textile industry for future generations,” Mercer said. “FibreTrace combines physical and digital traceability for verification of a fibers sustainability credentials–combine this with Higg’s ability to incorporate data across every facility in a supply chain…it empowers brands to make best practice sustainable decisions right from the start.”
Higg’s traceability partners will enable blockchain technologies to support tracking and tracing of a product’s chain of custody, streamline certification claims, and address material movement, supplier data, consumer engagement, and brand protection. The collaborative approach across the global industry seeks to provide immediate, verified insights to Higg users and allows brands to better fulfill the expectations of the public, the satisfaction of corporate sustainability goals and the oversight of regulatory agencies.
As part of this program, key social and sustainability data from Higg will also be made available for direct integration into partner platforms, creating more robust solutions for both partners and their customers.
“Sustainability cannot exist without traceability, which is why TrusTrace is on a mission to bring true transparency to brands who really want to know what they sell,” said Shameek Ghosh, CEO and co-founder of TrusTrace. “In collaborating with Higg, our technology can be leveraged to drive more sustainably conscious and socially responsible decisions across the global supply chain, while simultaneously equipping the TrusTrace platform with key data from Higg that will help our customers make better, more informed sourcing decisions. It’s a win-win for all involved.”
Launched in 2019 as a public-benefit corporation, Higg is the exclusive licensee of the Higg Index, an industry-leading value chain measurement methodology developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition.