Higg and Centric Software bring sustainability to product design

Consumer spending is shifting. The trend? Sustainability is a must-have, and if the consumer goods industry can’t prove a data-backed reduction in environmental impact, buyers will head elsewhere. Integrating sustainable product design will be essential. As businesses set quantitative sustainability goals, they are turning to digital solutions that will measure and manage a product’s impact from design to end-of-use. Aside from their typical use of maximizing efficiency and profit, product lifecycle management (PLM) platforms are proving to be critical in helping businesses tackle product sustainability.

To rise to this trend, Higg has partnered with Centric Software, a leading PLM platform. Using Higg data, Centric PLM users will be able to compare conventional materials with alternative options, helping designers create products that integrate sustainability from the onset. With the click of a button, users will be able to send materials from Centric PLM to Higg and obtain impact information on areas including carbon footprint and water utilization, using the most robust and trusted sustainability dataset available. When the Bill of Materials is complete, Higg will also provide holistic data that includes information on end-of-use and total impact.

“Through Centric’s integration with Higg, designers gain access to material-level environmental impacts, which enables them to make critical decisions to develop more sustainable products,” says Higg CEO Jason Kibbey. “Conscious consumers are demanding both high-quality and environmentally-responsible products, and with Higg data, businesses can deliver on these expectations.”

“We are proud to partner with Higg, who lead the way in guiding consumer goods businesses through the maze of sustainable sourcing,” says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. “Centric PLM’s integration with Higg will empower our customers to make better choices that benefit their environmental impact, brand reputation and bottom line.”

“Centric PLM is a very important part of our digital transformation journey. Its interconnection with Higg will help Epic to analyze and understand the environmental impact of our products and help us make lower-impact, more sustainable product offerings to our customers,” says Ranjan Mahtani, Executive Chairman of Epic Group., a Centric customer.

This partnership makes setting impact targets approachable for businesses in any stage of the sustainability journey. Emphasizing product sustainability is a key initiative to make change faster. As the window narrows to stay within 1.5 degrees of warming, time is of the essence for the industry to double-down on science-based approaches to reduce impact.