In an industry as interconnected as ours, progress on sustainability depends on shared purpose, credible data, and scalable action.
That’s why Cascale and Worldly work together through what we call the Shared Value Loop, a concept we revealed at the Cascale Annual Meeting 2025 in Hong Kong. The Shared Value Loop is how Cascale and Worldly turn credibility into capability, and capability into measurable progress. It’s a living system that ensures standards evolve, data scales, and insights turn into impact across the value chain.
The Shared Value Loop represents how our two organizations — one a market-driven nonprofit, the other a leading technology platform — complement one another in driving industry transformation. It’s not just a collaboration; it’s a system designed to ensure that members, customers, and the broader community all benefit from clarity, consistency, and real results.
Where Credibility Meets Capability
Cascale and Worldly play different but deeply connected roles within the sustainability ecosystem.
- Cascale convenes a global industry, and ensures the integrity of the tools, the alignment of methodologies, and the industry-wide governance that keeps our systems credible and trusted.
- Worldly delivers those tools at scale through a real-time technology platform, proven analytics, and industry-forward innovation; making credible data accessible, actionable, and comparable.
Together, we close the loop between standard-setting and implementation, turning ambition into measurable impact. This collaboration ensures that credible standards become widely adopted practices — moving the industry from alignment to real-world execution.
Cascale builds the foundation for credible, science-based measurement. Worldly transforms that foundation into daily usability, enabling thousands of organizations to act on shared standards, at scale.
The Eight Dimensions of Shared Value
The Shared Value Loop is built around eight reinforcing elements that move from Cascale’s foundation of governance and legitimacy to Worldly’s enablement through data and technology.
1. Tool Governance & Methodology Integrity (Cascale)
Everything starts with a robust foundation. Cascale governs the methodologies that underpin its Higg Index tools, ensuring they are science-based, globally aligned, and further enhanced through a multi-stakeholder process.
2. Market Access & Industry Relevance (Cascale)
Cascale brings together 300+ members across the value chain — brands, manufacturers, and affiliates — ensuring the tools and frameworks stay relevant to real-world challenges and business needs.
3. Legitimacy & Accountability (Cascale)
Cascale’s multi-stakeholder governance provides transparency and accountability, giving industry, civil society, and academia a voice in shaping credible frameworks that include the voices of all actors, including the manufacturers.
4. Collective Action & Impact Leadership (Cascale → Worldly)
Through shared initiatives — from decarbonization programs to responsible purchasing practices — Cascale mobilizes its members and broader global community around shared commitments and the co-creation of solutions. Worldly then operationalizes those commitments through data and insights, turning collective intent into measurable outcomes.
5. Platform & Network Scale (Worldly)
Worldly connects the world’s largest sustainability network — tens of thousands of facilities and hundreds of brands and retailers — transforming individual data inputs into collective visibility and progress. This reach is powered by years of investment in innovation and customer enablement, ensuring the Higg Index and related tools reach the hands of those driving change on the ground.
6. Analytics & Actionable Intelligence (Worldly)
Worldly’s powerful analytics and benchmarking capabilities transform raw data into trusted intelligence, helping organizations predict risks, identify opportunities, track progress, and act with confidence.
7. Reporting & Risk Management (Worldly)
The platform supports credible reporting and risk management by offering consistent data outputs that align with major ESG disclosure frameworks and emerging regulatory requirements.
8. Technology Innovation & Enablement (Worldly)
Finally, Worldly’s ongoing innovation keeps the tools future-ready, integrating new capabilities like supplier dashboards, advanced benchmarking, and AI-driven analytics to accelerate learning and performance.
Delivering Value Across the Ecosystem
This Shared Value Loop ensures that every stakeholder benefits:
- Retailers and brands gain credible, comparable data to guide business decisions and meet regulatory expectations.
- Manufacturers gain visibility, benchmarking solutions, and opportunities to improve and be recognized for progress. They also gain efficiencies by aligning with a widely accepted standard (the Higg Index), and stronger alignment with their customers’ sustainability goals and increased access to markets that value verified performance.
- Policymakers and investors gain confidence in standardized, verifiable data.
- And the planet benefits from coordinated, data-driven action rather than fragmented, duplicative efforts.
By connecting Cascale’s convening power with Worldly’s delivery capability, the Shared Value Loop creates a self-reinforcing system: the more it’s used, the stronger and more valuable it becomes.
From Shared Framework to Shared Impact
We asked, and over 3,000 of you answered our recent awareness survey. You want a clearer depiction of how Cascale and Worldly work, and what benefits are ultimately delivered to you. The Shared Value Loop ensures every action reinforces the next, from credible standards to verified data to measurable progress. It’s how ambition turns into execution, and how our shared ecosystem grows stronger with every new participant. With your help, we are creating the alignment the industry needs to deliver on its sustainability goals — faster, smarter, and at scale.
Our shared goal is simple:
To equip the consumer goods industry with the trusted data and collaborative networks needed to achieve measurable, lasting impact.
As we expand further into adjacent product categories, such as home furnishings, this model will remain our foundation — helping new sectors tap into credible measurement, scalable data, and collective action.
