Recommendation No. 46 - Enhancing Traceability and Transparency of Sustainable Value Chains in the Garment and Footwear Sector

The objective of this recommendation is to establish a mechanism that enables governments, industry partners, consumers, and all other relevant stakeholders to make risk-informed decisions, overcome information asymmetry, communicate, and achieve accountability for sustainability claims (including those for regulatory compliance) and anchor business models to responsible business conduct. It does so by providing industry actors with a set of internationally agreed practices for the harmonized collection and transmission of data for tracking and tracing materials, products, and processes across an entire value chain, including all involved facilities and intermediaries, and includes related information about the sustainability performance of these value chain participants. While specifically developed for the garment and footwear industry, such internationally agreed practices for advancing traceability and transparency have applications in cross-industry value chains, thus contributing to the achievement of several goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, and particularly Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 on responsible consumption and production.