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Cascale CEO and 2024 end of year reflections
2024 Reflections: Celebrating Progress, Demanding More

As the year is winding down, Cascale’s CEO Colin Browne challenges leaders to enact transformative progress next year. Read the highlights from 2024 and more insights here!

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Tools / Higg Product Tools Cotton LCA Methodology

Higg Product Tools Cotton LCA Methodology

  • MSI
  • Product Module

The Higg MSI just got a major cotton methodology update, offering a new approach to cotton fiber modeling and data requirements. Read more below!

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Background

Developed by Cascale, the Higg Product Tools calculate environmental impacts of materials and consumer products of the apparel, footwear, and home textile industries. Within the Higg Product Tools, the Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI) is the cradle-to-gate material assessment tool that calculates the environmental impacts from the extraction or production of raw materials through manufacturing and finishing to the point where the material, trim/component, or packaging is ready to be assembled into a final product.

These calculations rely on life cycle assessment datasets, including data submitted by industry through the Higg MSI Contributor process. The current Higg MSI submission methodology only provides general instructions and doesn’t provide enough specific guidance to easily understand what information is needed to assess raw materials within agricultural systems. To address this, Cascale formed the Higg MSI Methodology Cotton Expert Team to build a cotton-specific methodology and model, leveraging member and industry commitments around data collection in this space.

The ‘Industry Aligned Life Cycle Assessment Methodology and Requirements for creating Cotton Fiber Datasets for the Higg Product Tools’ offers a new approach to cotton fiber modeling and data requirements. Nevertheless, the challenges to the appropriate modeling of agricultural and specifically cotton LCA data cannot be understated.

Objectives

The main objectives of the ‘Industry Aligned Life Cycle Assessment Methodology and Requirements for creating Cotton Fiber Datasets for the Higg Product Tools’ (also referred as ‘the Cotton Methodology’) are the following:

  • To update and improve datasets on cotton production through consistent and scalable LCI data collection and LCA modeling choices based around available industry data collection efforts, resulting in more time representative data and reduced dependence on costly individualized full LCA reports;
  • To clearly document modeling approaches, primary data requirements, what secondary datasets and assumptions are used in the LCA model, and how to use the calculated LCIA results;
  • To obtain an agricultural and on-farm perspective on environmental sustainability through LCA-focused stakeholder engagement;
  • To consider metrics beyond LCA to complement the Higg MSI LCA data;
  • To identify the key complementary insights needed to drive the most impactful actions for field practice improvements over time; driving positive change.

The methodology has undergone an external review process to assess the model and information requirements, increasing the credibility of the work and identifying areas of future improvement.

In addition, the Cotton fiber LCA Methodology does not aim to be consistent with, nor replace other cotton-specific LCAs conducted outside of this framework – even if the modeling rules are based on industry alignment – as each specific study has its own scope, data collection procedure, and intended use cases.

Theory of Change

The above objectives are in line with the vision of the Higg Product Tools as the goal is to provide better data that enables better and more informed decision-making and the accurate showcasing of sustainability performance improvements over time. It is important to note that the Higg MSI Cotton fiber data does not claim to make farm-level change, but rather helps accelerate the sourcing of more sustainable fibers through reporting the improvement of field practices over time. This is explained in more detail in the Theory of Change below.

Theory of Change Graphic

The consistency of the data refers to the application of the same modeling rules, system boundaries, data collection template, and background datasets, rather than spatio-temporal consistency, as each cotton data provider may submit data that represent different geographies and years.

Intended Uses

The results will be made available as LCIA datasets for use in the Higg Product Tools. These LCIA results can be used for a selected number of use cases. Primary use cases are intended to advance sustainable sourcing practices by empowering brands to effectively manage the environmental risks associated with their fiber sourcing choices and leverage data to support complementary analytical tools.

Primary Use Cases Non-supported Use Cases
Hotspot analysis Comparisons between geographies
Carbon accounting Cross-data provider comparisons
Risk assessment Comparisons with LCIA results outside the Higg Index
Demonstrate impact
Identify improvement areas
Track improvements over time

Download the Methodology

Please fill out the form to access the full methodology document

Get Involved

Cotton Programs are invited to participate and submit their data to the Higg MSI. To access the Data Collection Template and start your submission, please reach out to product@cascale.org with the subject: Cotton DCT.

To provide your feedback and comments to the Methodology document, please use this feedback form.

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