Founding of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and the HIG Index

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The chapter discusses the formation of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) by unlikely organizations, Patagonia and Walmart, who brought together competitors and industry players to address social and environmental impact in the apparel industry by creating the HIG index.

This week the ESG Insider podcast is on the ground at Climate Week NYC for a special series of interviews from the sidelines of The Nest Climate Campus. In this episode, we sit down with Amina Razvi, CEO of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC).

SAC is a nonprofit alliance for the consumer goods industry. It launched in 2009 when Walmart and Patagonia brought together peers and competitors from across the sector to develop a standardized approach to measuring sustainability performance and to drive collective action.

The apparel industry accounts for anywhere between 2% and 8% of emissions, and most of those come from Scope 3 emissions in the supply chain, Amina tells us.

“It's critically important for brands, retailers and manufacturers to actually be working together,” she says. “Collaboration and partnership and collective action are critical and needed to tackle not just the apparel industry's issues with climate change and decarbonization, but every sector.”

She also talks about the industry's evolving approach to circularity, or the practice of extending the lifespan of goods and reusing materials. Read research from S&P Global Sustainable1 on how clothing companies are approaching circularity here: https://www.spglobal.com/esg/insights/fast-on-fashion-slow-on-sustainability-clothing-companies-and-the-circular-economy

Listen to our previous episodes about Climate Week NYC here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-ground-at-climate-week-nyc-the-challenge-of/id1475521006?i=1000628577939

And here: https://www.spglobal.com/esg/podcasts/what-to-expect-from-climate-week-nyc-2023

This piece was published by S&P Global Sustainable1, a part of S&P Global.

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