SIZA, the Sustainability Initiative of South Africa, provides a platform for agricultural stakeholders to ensure ethical and environmentally sustainable trade. This platform monitors care for the environment and compliance with labour legislation. Our aim is to encourage continuous improvement in practices over time in excess of the minimum legal requirements. We engage directly with our stakeholders throughout the value chain in order to manage risks and identify needs and issues. Interventions and support tools are created by measuring member compliance over time.
The Sustainability Initiative of South Africa (SIZA), a membership based free standing, non-profit company, designed to assist growers with ethical labour compliance and environmental assurance whilst minimizing costs. It is a South African standard, developed, owned and operated in South Africa but aligned to global best practices. SIZA aims to have a cost effective approach for growers by supplying one standard and one audit no matter which market a producer supplies.
SIZA membership has increased with 89 new members during the last quarter, of which 78 registered for Social and 11 for Environmental. As one profile can comprise multiple membership registrations (i.e. Social (Ethical) and Environmental) it is important to take the amount of registrations into consideration. Currently there are 2 162 primary members registered for the SIZA Social module, whereas 1 303 primary members are also registered for SIZA Environmental – adding up to a total of 3 465 primary registrations. To date 95 members have registered for the SIZA Digital Recordkeeping Programme. From the 1st of January 2020 to date 1692 ethical audits were done and uploaded to the MySIZA Platform. 327 members have already gone through an environmental verification site visit of a formal environmental third-party audit.
Across the 3 platforms (SIZA, SEDEX and GlobalG.A.P.) SIZA is now linked to 301 businesses. SIZA currently represents more than 34 different commodities.
SIZA has a Toll Free Helpline where complaints and/or queries can be reported. This is a very helpful tool in giving a voice to farmworkers, as well as to SIZA members. Tel 0861 111 568
"SIZA aims through the platform, to give visibility throughout the value chain to retailers and exporters on their members."
"Both the industry and the retailers see SIZA as a solution for the fruit industry to manage international ethical labour practice requirements and to farm cost effectively. "
"SIZA aims to have a cost effective approach for growers by supplying one standard and one audit no matter which market a producer supplies."