Owner of brands Wrangler and Lee, leading global lifestyle apparel company Kontoor Brands has announced a new supply chain coalition of denim leaders to improve critical data incorporated into the Higg Material Sustainability Index (MSI), the apparel industry’s most widely used tool to measure and assess the impact of products on the environment.

As a part of these efforts, Arvind Limited, India’s leading lifestyle and fashion conglomerate, and Cone Denim, a global leader in denim authenticity and sustainable innovation, will share key data from the denim dyeing process that is currently not factored into the Higg MSI.

The companies plan to roll out the updated Higg MSI tool for all apparel brands by summer 2022.

DhruvAgarwal, Senior Director - Global Innovation, Sustainability, and Product Development, Kontoor Brands says,Higg MSI is an invaluable tool for assessing the environmental impact of processes and materials utilized in its products. Through this work, the industry will be able to have a more complete picture of denim’s impact, and our product development teams will have better insight into the environmental footprint of our products, empowering us to make more sustainable design choices.”

Kontoor, Arvind and Cone are committed to building upon the denim-related information within the Higg suite of tools to further standardise measurements of value chain sustainability and provide greater transparency to apparel companies during product design and development.