As Cascale (formerly Sustainable Apparel Coalition) approaches the fifth year of the FEM 3.0, it has begun developing FEM 4.0. Cascale is currently working on developing the FEM 4.0 content, and the assessment is planned to launch in November 2023. This latest version will take into account user feedback involving content questions, scoring, applicability, and more.
During this development phase, Cascale welcomes member feedback, which you can submit here. If you are not a member of Cascale but would like to submit feedback, you can reach out to your partners who can submit on your behalf. The feedback submission due day is by July 30th, 2022.
We are committed to keeping you aware of updates to the FEM 4.0 as they emerge, and will continue to notify you about the evolution of this assessment well before launch.
Please download the PDF summary to learn more.
If you want to share your module with other accounts, you must request or share a module with that account. Manufacturers can share their modules directly with any account type and request to view modules from account types that have filled out a module. Brand and Other account types can request modules from facilities and manufacturers.
To access sharing, pick the module type you’d like to share (FEM or FSLM) and go to that tab. Then click on the “Modules” tab right below. This will take you to the module tracking and sharing page. You can click “Request a module” or “Share a module” depending on which action you’d like to take. Choose the module type/year you would like to request or share and search the account name or account ID or Higg ID to find the account. Once your share/request is accepted, the module will be shared between accounts. Please click here to get the full guidance.
* Depending on your service level, there may be a fee associated with receiving shared modules. Please find more information here.
You can go to either the FEM or FSLM tab, depending on which module you’re looking for, and click the “Modules” tab below. Click “Shared With Me” to search the modules which have been shared with you. You can search by facility name.
Yes, bulk sharing requests are available on the platform. You can go to “Modules” on the home page and then click “request a module” and you will then see an option to send a bulk sharing request. Please click here to get the full guidance.
Connecting is now called sharing because it refers to sharing modules. Accounts are no longer “connected.” Instead, modules are “shared.” You can choose to share your module with other accounts each year. You will now have the option to share modules for specific years rather than sharing your entire module history with any account you have accepted.
When a module is shared all the information in a module is available to view.
Please click here to learn the updates of FEM 2020.
The FEM 2021 cadence starts from November 5th, 2021 to April 30th, 2022. Within this period, facilities can unpost and repost their FEM 2021 with unlimited times. After this period, facilities will have only one chance to post their FEM 2021.
Not all FEM questions are applicable to all facilities. In an effort to keep FEM relevant and intuitive for survey takers, inapplicable questions are automatically skipped in the FEM survey based on prior answers. This means that, if a group of questions is found inapplicable, a facility will not have the opportunity to fill them out. For example, a facility with extremely low water use will skip most questions in the water section and a facility with no air emissions will not answer many questions in the air emissions section.
Section and overall scores are calculated based on answerable questions. Therefore, the removal of inapplicable questions does not artificially reduce scores. However, applicabilities can prevent facilities from having questions within higher Levels of Achievement meaning that not all facilities have the opportunity to achieve Level 2 or 3 in sections where they are irrelevant to the facility’s operation.
Because applicabilities can leave facilities unable to attain higher Levels of Achievement (See Question above) for reasons other than performance it is not appropriate to use Level of Achievement to compare facilities without first confirming that their possible Level of Achievements are the same. Aggregation of Level of Achievement is also ill advised without first confirming that all grouped facilities have the same Level of Achievement ceiling for the same reason. Therefore, using section and survey scores is preferred for naive comparative and aggregated analyses.
In practice, large groups of facilities performing the same processes regularly have the same applicabilities and, in that case, may be meaningfully compared and aggregated along Level of Achievement. Determining whether the extra effort and fragility is worth it depends on the individual goals and context of the analysis.
The approved trainer program launched in 2017 and is accepting trainer applications on a rolling basis. Learn more here. To see a complete list of Higg FEM trainers, please visit howtohigg.org/trainers/.
Higg trainers have the option to enroll in “Chemicals Specialty”. Chemicals Specialty training is done through ZDHC. For more information visit: https://www.roadmaptozero.com/academy/. Once the ZDHC chemicals training is successfully completed, the Higg trainer will be awarded “Chemicals Specialty” status.
There are over 20 accredited training organizations and over 50 accredited trainers for Higg FEM. You can view the entire list on howtohigg.org/trainers/.
We are exploring offering training webinars in Chinese in the future.
At this time, we will only have webinar trainings in English and Mandarin.
All training materials developed by Cascale and Higg Co are available to all Higg users. Some webinars may be live for Cascale members only, but will be recorded and shared with all Higg users on HowtoHigg.org.
Yes. All training can be found on HowtoHigg.org.
It is a public platform. Members and nonmembers can access it for free.
Yes, training presentation decks will be shared via HowtoHigg.org that anyone can access.
The Higg.org platform has a “Support” button that connects users to the Higg Index Support team who can answer any technical support questions.
Yes, these processes are aligned.
We are specifying requirements that approved trainers need to follow. It is up to brands to curate their own services overall. The approved trainer title is intended for training providers that can provide services on an ongoing basis. Brands and facilities that are interested in going through the training will have this option. They can receive a certificate to certify this.