Delivered by Posten Norge AS

Certificate

SA8000

Type: Certificate valid for 3 years with audits every 6 months

Audit criteria:

  • No child labor
  • No forced labor
  • Occupational safety
  • Freedom of association and collective bargaining
  • Prohibition of discrimination
  • No disciplinary action
  • Working hour regulations in accordance with national standards

Minimum wage

Additional information:

  • Same requirements for companies as BSCI and ISO 9001
  • Particularly suitable for internationally operating companies
  • Documents compliance with social and labor law standards
  • Socially fair working conditions, occupational health and safety, and environmentally friendly production conditions
  • Developed in 1997/98 by the non-governmental organization Social Accountability International (SAI) in the U.S.
  • Based on international human rights conventions, a recommendation from the International Labour Organization (ILO), and a variety of ISO standards from the ISO 9001 quality management system standard
  • Current figures:
  • 56 industrial sectors from 58 countries are certified
  • that is over 2,000,000 employees from 4,608 facilities

Leather Working Group

Type: Registered membership and audited membership

Audit

criteria:

  • Ensuring transparency in leather processing and traceability of leather sourcing
  • Awarding of seals in the quality levels Gold, Silver, Bronze; additionally, assessment of supply chain transparency rated from A to C → rated “A” for those who can trace their leather back to the slaughterhouse

Additional information:

  • Multi-stakeholder initiative, NPO
  • Founded in England in 2005
  • No sanctions or exclusion from the group if the required progress is not made
  • Focus is on environmental aspects of leather processing, such as chemical and water consumption
  • Figures: Over 600 leather manufacturers certified; approximately 23% of finished leather comes from LWG-certified manufacturers; 945 members globally

ISO 9001 (DIN (national) EN (European) ISO (global)

Type: Certificate valid for 3 years, then recertification required

Assessment criteria:

  • Increase transparency of your operational processes
  • To sustainably improve customer satisfaction
  • Significantly reduce error rates and thus your costs
  • Exceed customer expectations

Additional information:

  • Quality management standard, the most widely used quality management standard nationally and internationally
  • Establishes minimum requirements for a company’s quality management
  • Aims to improve company performance at all levels
  • Better quality management helps save money, increase profits, and generate new business
  • Customer focus as one of the most important principles of quality management (Identifying current and future customer needs and expectations → Can these be met?)

Goal: Exceed customer expectations

ISO 14001 (DIN EN ISO)

Type: Certificate valid for 3 years, then recertification required

Assessment criteria:

  • Increased resource efficiency
  • Reduction of consumption and environmental costs
  • Provisions of the internal environmental policy
  • Assessment, identification, and monitoring of significant environmental aspects
  • Appointment of a Environmental Management Officers
  • Employee training and information
  • Documentation of the environmental management system
  • Internal audits

Additional information:

  • Globally applied standard for environmental management systems
  • Published in 1996 by the International Organization for Standardization and revised in 2015
  • Establishes requirements for an environmental management system (improving environmental performance, fulfilling legal and social obligations, and achieving environmental objectives)
  • Applicable to organizations of any type and size
  • DOES NOT specify absolute requirements for environmental performance → Requirements for ISO 14001 can be met even if environmental performance differs (between two companies)
  • Approximately 300,000 companies and organizations certified worldwide
  • (All EMAS-certified companies can also be certified to ISO 14001, but not vice versa)

Sedex

Type: Membership available upon application

Assessment criteria:

  • Fair working conditions 
  • Health and safety
  • Business ethics
  • Environmental management

Additional information:

  • Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (SEDEX) – the largest collaborative platform for the exchange of sustainable, ethical supply chain data
  • A globally recognized, innovative, and effective solution for supply chain management
  • Launched in 2002
  • Helps reduce risks, protect the company’s reputation, and improve supply chain processes 
  • Over 60,000 members in 180 countries across 35 industry sectors

BSCI (Business Social Compliance Initiative)

Type: 2 types of membership based on the Code of Conduct:

  • Regular: Involved in the supply chain and thus part of the audit and quality process
  • Associate membership: no active role in the supply chain

Audit criteria:

  • Compliance with legal requirements
  • Freedom of association
  • Right to collective bargaining
  • Prohibition of discrimination
  • Compensation
  • Working hours
  • Workplace safety
  • Prohibition of child labor
  • Prohibition of Forced Labor and Disciplinary Measures
  • Environmental and safety issues

Additional information:

  • Business Social Compliance Initiative, founded in 2003 on the initiative of the FTA (Foreign Trade Association), a platform
  • A business initiative for companies aimed at improving working conditions in the global supply chain
  • Focuses primarily on social responsibility activities within companies’ supply chains (wages, working hours, prohibition of discrimination in hiring, freedom of assembly, etc.)
  • Members are audited at least every two years by independent audit organizations
  • A member-driven initiative, not comparable to environmental and social labels that are based on certification



Engraving preview