Worldly explained: CGO Adele Stafford talks about the Higg Index, Cascale and measuring environmental impact on a product base

Worldly is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive platforms for sustainability data from the apparel sector and beyond. Founded in 2019 as a nonprofit technology company, it was originally developed as a data platform for the Higg Index of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC). As of last year, SAC has transitioned into Cascale. Based on a joint initiative between Walmart and Patagonia, the Higg Index is one of the first digital tools to methodically collect and evaluate the environmental impact of apparel production.

Since then, many companies in the global apparel and footwear industry have adopted the Higg Index and the Worldly platform. The platform includes more than 40,000 brands, retailers and manufacturers in the fashion, outdoor, sports, home and toy industries. Worldly’s latest tool is the Product Impact Calculator, which uses AI and long-term data from thousands of manufacturers worldwide to quantify Scope 3 emissions at the product level. Adele Stafford, Chief Growth Officer at Worldly, explains who Worldly is and how it is helping to transform the industry.

Worldly (ex Higg), provides a supply chain data insights platform

SGI Europe: Before we talk about Worldly in detail, I would like to clarify the relationship between Worldly and Cascale. How do Cascale and Worldly differ?

Stafford: Worldly is a public benefit corporation that provides a leading supply chain sustainability data insights platform. It originated as Higg Co., which spun out of Cascale, formerly the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), in 2019 to focus on delivering scalable technology solutions. In 2024, SAC rebranded as Cascale to reflect its broadened mission of driving equitable and restorative business practices across the consumer goods industry.

Our primary relationship with Cascale is as the exclusive provider of the Higg Index tools, which Cascale owns and develops. This partnership combines Cascale’s expertise in developing robust sustainability methodologies with Worldly’s capabilities in delivering these tools through an advanced digital platform, enabling organizations to measure and improve their environmental and social impacts effectively.

So Worldly provides access to the Higg Index on its platform and develops additional solutions and analytics that enhance the user experience and drive data standardization across the industry. In contrast, Cascale develops the Higg Index methodology – defining the structure, questions and content of each tool – and also serves as a stakeholder organization facilitating collective action.

Why was Worldly set up as a separate IT company from Cascale?

Worldly was established as a separate technology company from Cascale to allow each organization to focus on its core strengths. By creating a dedicated entity for technology development, Worldly could accelerate the delivery of scalable, user-centric technology solutions like the Higg Index, meeting the evolving needs of the industry and regulatory landscape.

This structure enables Cascale to concentrate on its mission of bringing members together across the consumer goods sector to drive social and environmental performance improvements. The separation has thus enhanced the effectiveness and reach of both organizations in promoting sustainable practices.

Worldly’s Product Impact Calculator focuses on material and product

Last year you launched the Product Impact Calculator (PIC) to calculate product-related Scope 3 emissions. What makes this new tool unique?

We launched the Product Impact Calculator about nine months ago at our annual customer forum in Munich. The tool was originally designed to calculate five categories of scope 3 emissions, where most of the impact comes from manufacturing and selling goods. So that’s not comprehensive scope 3. These five categories of Scope 3 are where most of the impact resides, and our calculation is really focused on a product and material level.

What is novel about our solution is that it leverages internal supplier primary data to give you much more accurate supplier and material data, to give you a much more accurate snapshot of your scope 3. So most quick scope 3 calculators today are spend-based. They’re not really looking at the impacts of a particular product or material, and I don’t know of any other scope 3 calculators or solutions like this that tie a product back to a particular supplier and its actual impacts. That’s really our secret sauce, and it leverages, of course, what we’re best known for, which is the 40,000-plus suppliers in our database that continue to give us primary data year over year.

Your data is based on the 40,000-plus suppliers you already work with. So, if a brand wants to work with you, it doesn’t have to have all that data already, right?

That’s right. The tool is designed to meet users where they are. So you don’t have to have any primary data. You could just input the number of T-shirts, for example, the number of pants, and you could get a quick scope 3 calculation based on our generic data.

Now, that data is coming from internal industry-aligned databases – so the Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI) and the Higg Product Module. And both of those are aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol framework, which is obviously really important in terms of the ability to use that data for reporting.

Brands are uploading 20,000 products at a time

What kind of products does the Product Impact Calculator cover?

It’s evolving over time, as most of our solutions do. There are 38 product categories currently in the tool. These are all focused entirely on apparel and home textiles, as well as outdoor and sporting goods products.

But we’re getting ready to expand that quite broadly. So it will be very applicable to a whole variety of consumer goods categories in a matter of months.

How many companies are already working with the PIC?

We’ve got about eight to ten that are currently adopting the tool.

We started with a vision of who we thought our ideal customer would be. And I think that’s really evolved as we’ve seen more sophisticated brands using it, because the volume of products that they produce on an annual basis is so large that it’s typically extremely costly and time-consuming to have a consultant do that work. So we’ve got brands uploading 20,000 products at a time, which is really, really exciting.

Worldly works with subscriptions

What does a company need to use the tool?

All it needs is a subscription to the Worldly platform.

You know, we have that available as a standalone solution. You don’t even have to access the full platform. If you’re just interested in using the Product Impact Calculator, you can purchase a subscription just to that tool. That’s the beauty of it. You can show up with very rudimentary data or not much data at all. And then we can help you build that over time, depending on your particular product categories. We also provide service support to help you manage that input data and manage that data.

And is it necessary to be a member of Cascale?

No, it’s not. We have developed this as a standalone solution. It uses data that comes from Cascale’s methodology work within the Higg Index, but you don’t have to be a member of Cascale to use the tool. So what we’re seeing in what we think of as adjacent categories to apparel, let’s say outdoor and sporting goods, luggage and bags or home goods – we have companies that are really keen to get started on the Worldly platform and are showing a lot of interest in the Product Impact Calculator.

Worldly’s calculator will be aligned with PEF framework

Can you use the tool to comply with the legislation?

Yes. Because it is aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol framework and methodology, we consider it reporting ready.

But again, it’s not comprehensive scope 3, but category one – that really, really big impact driver. It’s going to give you the outputs that you need to report at that level of scope 3, which is critical. And that’s what companies are really hyper-focused on. We’re also working on a new regulatory solution that leverages the Product Impact Calculator. Our plan is that you’ll use this tool to get to PEF, and as PEF takes shape in the EU, we’ll continue to monitor that closely and the Product Impact Calculator will be aligned with the PEF framework. You’ll be able to use this tool to get to PEF and any kind of country or region regulatory framework that aligns with PEF. As you can imagine, the ecosystem is very complicated, especially with all the regulatory changes that are happening all the time.

You’ve said eight to ten companies are already working with your tool. What kind of targets have you set for yourself?

We’re really trying to triple or quadruple that next year. And I think we will. One of the key features that customers really want is the ability to tie Tier 2 factory data back to a product, because Tier 2 – the mill, the cotton gin – that type of material producer or processor is obviously where you find the biggest impact on a product. And that is launching in June 2025. Brands are really excited to get that Tier 2 linkage, because it’s going to be able to really show evidence of the impact-reduction work that they’re doing over time with their suppliers. They’re going to be able to essentially get credit for all of the investments they’ve made within their supply chain.

And that’s the bulk of the work that brands continue to do on our platform. It’s really managing and driving that engagement with their suppliers.

At the conference in Munich, Cascale and Worldly used the slogan “Do it faster and bigger.” What goals did you set and how have you progressed since then?

Cascale and Worldly have the same imperative. I think this is just a common sentiment in the industry, which is that we need to move faster.

To that end, we launched the Product Impact Calculator, which has moved us from being thought of primarily as a data collection platform to more of a data calculation engine and positioned us to help with reporting more clearly. We’re on the cusp of releasing a new tool with rich, robust analytics that will pull from all the different solutions on our platform and really help our users very quickly identify where the hot spots are in their supply chain. They will see immediately where they need to focus their actual impact reduction activities – really moving from this idea of data collection to data in action. And when I think about how to move faster and how to scale, it’s all about the efficiency of being able to quickly identify where the biggest opportunities are. And then we are expanding into new categories. That’s another area of focus for us and for Cascale. We are really moving into home furnishings and outdoor hard goods. Those are important expansions and opportunities for us as well.