The Textile Exchange MIE tool, designed for brands, retailers, and suppliers, allows users to assess potential impacts and dependencies at the raw material country of origin level, focusing on the initial stages of the value chain where farms, forests, or production facilities are located.
This expansion comes as a result of collaboration with expert organisations, including the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii), Canopy, Conservation International, Rainforest Alliance, Risilience, The Nature Conservancy, Trase – Global Canopy, Sebastián Block – Environmental Performance Index, Yale University, World Resources Institute, and ZDHC Foundation.
The tool's relevance in the industry is highlighted by Veronique Rochet, senior director of sustainability at Puma, who stated: "We recently used the Materials Impact Explorer (MIE) tool provided by Textile Exchange to inform our biodiversity risk assessment of our key raw materials such as polyester and cotton.”
Rochet emphasised the tool's value in reviewing strategies to address potential biodiversity impacts and dependencies on environmental assets and ecosystem services. She noted the importance of including forests as a risk category, which aligns with Puma's commitment to sourcing all bovine leather from verified deforestation-free supply chains by 2030 or earlier.
The addition of air pollution as a risk category is also significant, as it extends beyond Puma's existing Tier 1 and 2 supplier programmes to provide insights into risks in the upstream value chain. The MIE tool specifically analyses risks at the Tier 4 level, offering a comprehensive view of the entire supply chain.
Rochet acknowledged that forests are part of a broader land use change risk area, with plans to explore opportunities for expanding this aspect in the future.
