Sustainability seal-how to align the Brazilian footwear sector to international requirements

The Brazilian footwear sector has faced high competitiveness, and, as a result of its current positioning regarding quality and pricing standards, has lost market share in the recent years. Additionally, there is a great demand for sustainable offers in terms of industry processes and products. Given this reality, it is vital to push the footwear industry towards more sustainable practices allied with greater quality standards and lower prices when possible. This paper presents a proposal of a sustainable system of indicators, the Sustainability Seal, created for adding value and increasing the companies´ competitive advantage, aligning the footwear sector with international sustainability initiatives. The proposal presents 52 indicators classified into four dimensions (economic, environmental, social, and cultural) and three categories (obligatory, very important, and desirable). The Seal adoption is planned to be step-by-step, and, for that, comprises five maturity levels: White, Cooper, Silver, Gold, and Diamond. The set of indicators was defined based on a survey with footwear companies and on the alignment with other similar international initiatives. We also developed a software system, which allows self-diagnose for basic maturity levels (White and Bronze) and supports the auditing process by external certificate companies for advanced maturity levels (Silver, Gold and Diamond levels). The main contributions of this work are the development of a system of indicators that fully meet the needs of the footwear industry in Brazil, besides presenting a method that can be used to develop similar systems for other sectors.