Transparency
Having 100 per cent transparency is the goal for the many wool companies, along the same lines as Patagonia’s own wool standard, which claims to be more stringent than Textile Exchange’s Responsible Wool Standard, with Ortovox launching its Wool Promise and Devold their new Devold Wool Direct.
Wool Promise focuses on animal welfare, farm and land management, and slaughter and transport. More than 60 indicators are checked regularly on the farms by an external auditor and it features long-term contracts with farms. This is also one of the pillars in Devold Wool Direct, which is a new company under Devold that works with specific farms in Australia, New Zealand and Argentina and started their sheep-to-shop program two years ago. The company has a three-year contract with each and every farm for specific wool that covers Devold’s needs. “For every product we know exactly where the wool came from,” explained Craig Smith, who heads Devold Wool Direct.
Meanwhile, HD Wool’s Jo Dawson had an interesting take on the ethical side of wool production, revealing the UK business will soon launch a new community interest company working with regenerative farming. One of the main issues it will address are suicides among UK sheep farmers – surprisingly a growing issue with “loneliness and a lack of sense of purpose.”
The Higg Index update for the two new suites of tools for the use-phase and the end-of-use phase, was presented by Julie Brown to a room full of engaged sportswear companies. “The new tools will be launched during the third quarter of this year,” she explained and listed the products selected for the launch: waterproof breathable jacket, athletic shoes, athleisure (casual) shoes, knit products, denim products, bed linens and woven products. Maximum score in the user-phase will be 1.25 – the gold standard – 1 being the baseline, whereas in the end-of-use phase, the maximum score is 1.15. “It is clear that an item has a lower impact the more you use it,” she said and added that industry tests will be the basis for the scores, as well as garment return issues – for example pilling and lack of colourfastness.
In-house take-back schemes are another surefire ‘winner’, said Brown. “We have dropped talking about ‘durability’, as the fashion companies had issues with that, so now we are talking about ‘duration of service’, which is longevity,” she added.
Saying that more product categories will be added, and that consumer-facing information will be vital, she said this was to get consumers to act more responsible, but also to make the Higg index something the consumer can use to make purchasing decisions.
