BSR Insight | New Eco Index for Improving Product Life-Cycle Impacts
The Eco Index—a new web-based environmental assessment tool created by the Outdoor Industry Association’s Eco Working Group—is aimed at helping companies in the apparel and outdoor industry understand (and ultimately improve) a product's impacts at different life-cycle stages.
The index framework contains:
- Guidelines and management best practices for how companies and their suppliers can continually reduce their environmental impacts.
- Indicators—including a comparative scoring system—to help companies score individual products by answering questions related to materials, packaging, manufacturing and assembly, transportation and distribution, use and service, and end of product life.
- Metrics to help companies collect quantitative data on product-specific information related to land-use intensity; impacts on water, waste, and biodiversity; impacts on people and the environment from chemicals and toxics; and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
The tool is currently in a beta phase and will be completed by early 2011. Visit the index's website to provide feedback on the tool.
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