New Sustainable Apparel Coalition Will Index Consumer Products
03/02/2011
SustainableBusiness.com News
A group of major apparel and footwear brands joined with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week to launch the Sustainable Apparel Coalition.
The Coalition aims to reduce the environmental and social impacts of apparel and footwear products sold around the world by establishing an industry-wide index for measuring and evaluating apparel and footwear product sustainability.
To accomplish this, the Coalition said it will draw on the work of different efforts to measure and track apparel sustainability including the Outdoor Industry Association 'Eco Index' and Nike's 'Environmental Apparel Design' tools. The group has been working together informally since early 2010, and will begin beta-testing the initial version of an apparel sustainability index in April, followed by a footwear index later in 2011.
Initially the indexes will not be consumer facing. Rather it will be used internally to drive pre-competitive solutions and collaborations, the Coalition says on its website. But the indexes will serve as a foundation for eventual reporting to consumers on the sustainability performance of the products they purchase.
The stated goals of the Coalition are to drive improvements in energy, waste, water, and toxics in the supply chain and help reduce operating costs and risks.
Founding members are based in North America, Asia, Europe and the U.K. They include:
The group said other initiatives will include spotlighting promising technological innovations, and identifying opportunities for improving current social and environmental practices throughout the supply chain.
"Each of the Coalition's participating companies and organizations see an opportunity to advance their own sustainability goals by collaborating to create more uniform, broadly defined tools for measuring sustainability, and for collective actions to drive innovations in products and manufacturing that will benefit the entire apparel industry and consumers," said Rick Ridgeway, Coalition Chair and Vice President of Environmental Programs, Patagonia.
Website: www.apparelcoalition.org/home