Manufacturers and retailers are developing an ambitious rating system for the ecological impact of their clothes

Manufacturers and retailers are developing an ambitious rating system for the ecological impact of their clothesMore than 200 clothing manufacturers and retailers have joined together to create an industry-wide sustainability rating, the Eco Index, which will assess the environmental impact of products along their entire life-cycle chain.

Members include Target, Nike, Levi Strauss, Timberland, Patagonia and Columbia Sportswear. The latter is sharing lessons learned from its own life-cycle assessment tools to develop the index.

Though the Eco Index is a joint project of the Outdoor Industry Association and European Outdoor Group, it is a global, open source tool that can be applied to other industries and sectors.

“We realised early on that consumers can’t make informed choices without comparability, which requires industry-wide collaboration and standardisation,” says Beth Holzman, manager of CSR strategy and reporting at Timberland.

Universally applicable

The Eco Index, currently at the “beta” stage of development, provides three types of tools – guidelines, indicators and metrics. These can be used together or separately, and enable any company to participate, whether seasoned in sustainability or not.

Each tool assesses a product’s impact within six life-cycle stages: materials; packaging; product manufacturing and assembly; transport and distribution; use and service; and end of life.

The guidelines outline various means of reducing a product’s impact. The indicators are a scoring system within each life-cycle that identify areas for improvement, and the metrics assess the measurable impacts in areas such as water, waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

Ultimately, stakeholders hope to create a label that will empower consumers to assess which brands are truly environmentally savvy – and could affect their buying choices.

But this development is still some way off – the index has encountered its share of difficulties. Because the index is structured to assess a plethora of products, it is tricky to determine the best means to assess each product’s unique life-cycle.

Beth Holzman of Timberland says a big challenge is how to objectively compare materials. Take a product’s end of life-cycle. She says: “Which scores better: a durable material that can be recycled, or a less durable material that can’t be reused but has a lighter environmental footprint to start?”

Holzman argues that with so many variables, it’s extremely hard to create an index that’s “black and white, or clear and simple, which is essential to communicating the information to consumers in a way that’s relevant and useful”.

And there’s the pesky issue of getting everyone to agree on how best to measure and publish these metrics, both internally and eventually to consumers.

Still, many of the index’s weaknesses are inseparable from one of its principal strengths; namely, its inclusiveness. After all, this is the first such index for the clothing industry and the intention of the beta phase is for stakeholders to provide feedback and work out the kinks, including how best to communicate to consumers.

“Once we have all the metrics determined, it will be a lot easier to get agreement about the right way to share and present that information externally and to consumers,” says Colleen Kohlsaat, manager for environmental sustainability at Levi Strauss.

“Our current focus is ensuring the usability and robustness of the content and framework,” says Beth Jensen, corporate responsibility manager at the Outdoor Industry Association. “We may look at the possibilities for a consumer-facing label – and all the complexities that may be associated with that – once the index has been thoroughly vetted.”

The stakeholder engagement process should be complete by the end of 2010, with the formal phase 1 index to launch in early 2011.