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 is growing rapidly as guided by an effective and modern technology platform, called MySIZA. At the end of November 2020, we had a membership of 2068. 1199 social/ethical 3rd party audits were done from the 1st of January 2019 to date and uploaded to the MySIZA Platform. Currently 1301 of all primary members in the SIZA membership subscribe to the SIZA environmental standard. 1036 of these members completed their Environmental Self-assessment Questionnaires (SAQ's). 142 Environmental 2nd party verifications were done over the last two years and 16 Environmental 3rd party environmental audits in 2020. Across the 3 platforms (SIZA, SEDEX and GlobalG.A.P.) SIZA is now link to 209 businesses that operates in 17 different markets.
To ensure that we can assist our members to farm more productively while still caring for the environment, SIZA developed the 2nd-party verification programme to provide hands-on and site-specific assistance for our members to continuously improve their businesses as well as their environmental sustainability. This programme is also a solid base to evaluate your business’ environmental sustainability and provides a platform to prepare for the 3rd-party audit programme.
We would like to invite SIZA members to sign up for the Environmental 2nd-party verification programme, so that we can assist you to care for the environment. Included as part of the Environmental membership fee, i.e. without incurring additional fees, members have the opportunity to take part in the 2nd-party Verification Continuous Improvement Programme which will assist them to get all the necessary environmental practices implemented. It is important to note that 2nd-party verifications are not the same as a 3rd-party environmental audit. Different to a 3rd-party audit, the SIZA Environmental specialist will be available to assist you throughout the verification process to ensure that your environmental practices are not only according to legislation and requirements, but that you can confidently care for the environment that you operate in.
To sign-up for the Environmental 2nd-party verification programme, please send an email to Karla Hoogendijk (karla@siza.co.za) before or by latest Monday, 25 January 2020 or contact the SIZA Office at 021 852 8184 for more information.
"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."