The much-awaited Preferred Fiber Toolkit (PFT) is now out. The Toolkit – publicly made available together by Gap Inc. and Textile Exchange – offers guidance to sourcing and design teams to help their companies be on target with their sustainability goals.
The brainchild of Gap Inc., PFT comprises a rigorous evaluation of raw material choices that takes inputs from Higg Materials Sustainability Index by Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC). The holistic indicators from the Toolkit enable businesses to give due consideration to biodiversity, land-use change, waste elimination, human rights, labour issues and animal welfare to enable a circular economy.
Diana Rosenberg – Product Sustainability Manager, Gap Inc. says: “The PFT indicates how a data-driven approach leads to increased confidence in sourcing sustainable materials. The development of PFT reflects Gap Inc.’s ability to develop internal awareness on designing better products and set fiber strategies.”
The Toolkit comes to the rescue of apparel and retail businesses who struggle to cohesively measure and explain sourcing material choices. With increased expectations from the customers regarding higher levels of transparency, brands are working towards sourcing and marketing more sustainable fibers. The timely release of PFT has the ability to guide the textile industry towards becoming more sustainable in not-so-far future.
Textile Exchange, a global non-profit organization, develops, manages and promotes a suite of industry standards and publishes valuable industry data and insights that help brands and retailers to measure, manage and track their use of preferred fiber and materials.
“Textile Exchange was part of the early work along with independent reviewers such as SAC. We will continue to improve upon the Toolkit’s foundation work done by Gap Inc. and create a combination of quantitative and qualitative data from materials to make it into a decision-making tool for the industry. This tool will drive the work of Textile Exchange to meet our 2030 Climate+ goals,” shares Liesl Truscott, Director – Europe and Materials Strategy, Textile Exchange.
Joël Mertens – Senior Manager, Higg Product Tools, Sustainable Apparel Coalition opines: “The Sustainable Apparel Coalition applauds the release of the Preferred Fiber Toolkit. With the embedded Higg MSI data and other qualitative indicators, the PFT users can consider environmental impact and additional sustainability values in their sourcing decisions. By aligning the PFT with Higg MSI data, users of both tools can seamlessly track the impacts of their decisions from fiber to full materials and products.”
The Toolkit will be updated by Textile Exchange with new data and a broader set of fibers and materials. It will also work towards identifying areas of further reduction of impact to support the industry in meeting science-based targets. The Toolkit will serve as a complement to SAC’s Product Tools.
Blurb:
Preferred Fiber Toolkit helps businesses cohesively measure and explain sourcing material choices.
