Early victories begin in war against bad science of fashion sustainability

On October 08th, 2020, Kerry Senior, Secretary of International Council of Tanners, wrote a strongly worded letter to Julie Brown, Director of Higg Index, demanding that Higg Index score for leather be suspended. The joint letter, co-signed by thirteen leather manufacturing and advocacy groups, contends that Higg score for leather does not integrate basic understandings in its methodological choices and data and thus misguides users of the score.

Leather is the latest sector, after silk, wool and alpaca, who got furious at the Higg Index scores. A minimum requirement for any widely used index is for it to be accurate, representative, relevant and transparent. Higg is being attacked on all of these counts by these industry associations.

A minimum requirement for any widely used index is for it to be accurate, representative, relevant and transparent.

Kerry alleges that the score for leather is based on data no later than 2013, refers to Brazilian and US herds only, and therefore is not representative of the current status of the leather supply chain. The assessment is cradle-to-factory gate only and does not recognize the critical use and end-of-life phases of a product. Further, the score does not differentiate on the type of leather produced. He also argued that the lifespan of cattle is assumed to be five years whereas the lifespan of a typical beef animal is usually between 12 and 36 months, which results in the apparent impact under the Higg Index to be significantly larger than the real impact.

At present, cow leather has a total Higg MSI impact of 176 per kilo compared with Nylon with an impact of 29 per kilo.

Shock journalism and bad science — best buddies?

Higg index is not the only battle leather industry is fighting. Leather industry primarily operates in symbiosis with the meat industry. Last November, BBC ran a documentary titled “ Meat: A Threat to Our Planet?” National Farmers Union (NFU) made a complaint alleging lack of impartiality. It was escalated to Ofcom when BBC failed to make a timely response. Finally, on October 15th 2020, almost a year later, BBC pulled the documentary and acknowledged that viewers only received ‘a partial analysis of the impact of livestock farming on the global environment and biodiversity.” It wasn’t the argument against meat per se, but deliberate use of bad science that was the problem.

Silk industry has same complaint

Against Higg Index, arguments of similar nature are made by The International Sericultural Commission (ISC), the representative body for the global silk industry. ISC has also called to stop using the Higg MSI score for silk pending the development of an “independent and credible LCA for silk.” The ISC believes that there are “major flaws” in how Higg MSI currently scores silk which are in contravention with the guidelines of ISO said to have been adopted.

Veronica Bates Kassatly, an independent sector analyst, studied the datasets behind the silk score, and found that the ‘scientific’ source behind it is a study titled “Life cycle assessment of Indian silk” conducted by a team from University of Oxford in 2014. She found several issues with this source. The Higg score is indicative of the impact of industrially produced silk, but the Oxford study covers silk production by smallholder farmers in rural India. Further, Oxford study itself states that “gradable bivoltine silk, representative of internationally traded silk, constitutes only a small proportion of total Indian silk output,” raising a question by Veronica, “why is the SAC’s valuation based on an LCA of Indian production?” In her research, Veronica couldn’t find any publicly available LCA for industrial silk production. She also points out that impact calculation until the factory gate ignores the fact that silk clothes are worn more number of times and do not release toxic microfibers during use phase, and thus presents an incorrect picture of relative impact.

At present, silk has a total Higg MSI impact of 1086 per kilo, while polyester has a total impact of only 36 per kilo.

At present, silk has a total Higg MSI impact of 1086 per kilo, while polyester has a total impact of only 36 per kilo. This is akin to saying that a brand dumping a kilo of silk from its production line and bringing anything less than 30 kilos of polyester instead would be saving the planet.

Lack of transparency and consultation

Silk and leather industry representatives allege lack of transparency in score calculations and the lack of engagement with the industry to ensure that the data used is accurate. For example, the SAC recently increased the MSI score of silk from 681 to 1086 and decreased polyester’s score from 44 to 36 without offering any explanation as to why. SAC remains secretive about its LCA methodology offering only vague answers on its portal. A recent known instance of transparency was when SAC instituted a four year study by academics at the University of California, Berkeley. But access was granted to data from version 2.0 of Higg FEM that was shelved in December 2017 and the study was funded by Laudes Foundation — which has funded SAC with €1.5 million. Upon completion of the report, Higg Co invited the report’s co-author Niklas Lollo to consult for the company.

These are not without implications. Higg index is widely used and these scores have a major impact on what is produced and sold. For example, Zalando recently made Higg sustainability assessment mandatory for all brands selling on its platform and several fashion brands have ditched alpaca fiber which is ranked second worst by Higg Index. .

Sustainability is far too important to be left to bad science.

It comes as a surprise to see that the news sources considered credible and most widely accepted frameworks not only base their analysis on outdated data and non-scientific approaches but also that they resist themselves being put under scrutiny. There is no denying that the leather and natural fiber industries have a lot to clean up, but that cannot be an excuse to push bad science. This needs to change and the first step would be to put all frameworks that claim to tell what is sustainable and what is not under scientific scrutiny.

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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.