Since 2017 Benetton Group is a member of Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), the largest alliance promoting sustainable production, including, among others, fashion, footwear and textile brands.

Starting from 2018 the Company began to use the Higg Index, i.e. a series of tools developed by SAC that enable brands, retailers and suppliers to measure their sustainability performance.

In particular, we invite our suppliers to adopt the Higg Facility Tool, which can be considered as:

  • A self-assessment regarding social and environmental topics that quantifies the supplier’s actual performance level, the critical areas and the opportunities for improvement;
  • A first step towards information sharing and the beginning of a path leading to the standardization of assessment tools.

Specifically:

  • The Higg Facility Environmental Module (FEM) monitors the environmental management systems, the use of energy and water, the emission level, the wastewater treatment, the waste management, the use and the management of chemicals. The Higg FEM replaced the previous internal procedure used to verify the environmental impact of the facility, as part of the company’s Detox Program. Thanks to the Higg FEM, we assessed a significant percentage (approximately 80% by garments volume) of wet processes. Finally, the module enabled the Group to quantify the impact of wastewater along the value chain: in 2020, the plants of Olimpias, a strategic supplier to Benetton Group, discharged 1 169 318 m3 of water. Of this amount, almost all was conveyed into water treatment plants.
  • The Higg Facility Social Labour Module (FSLM) aims to promote fair and safe working conditions along the supply chain and to evaluate the effectiveness of the social management systems. In 2020 Benetton Group committed to managing the transition process from its CSR audit programme to the FSLM, which will become the exclusive benchmarking standard starting from 2021.

As an active member of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), in 2021 Benetton has completed the Higg Brand Retail Module (Higg BRM) for calendar year 2020, to evaluate its social and environmental impacts and satisfy transparency requirements coming from its stakeholders. The results were verified by the independent third party organization TÃœV Rheinland.

The Higg BRM module is an integrated tool designed by SAC to measure the overall sustainability performance of an organization, in order to clarify the strategic goals, monitor the progress and improve working conditions and environmental protection.

The Higg BRM allows to report sustainability data in a simple, reliable and comparable manner.

Five main sections are evaluated in the Higg BRM: management system, brand, retailer, stores, operations and logistics. Each section features an Environment Score and a Social Score.

Benetton commits to improve its social and environmental performance measured by Higg BRM every year.