Outdoor Industry Association is preparing to solicit proposals on how to create and manage a sustainability index its Eco Working Group voted to pursue two weeks ago. Twenty-nine of the Eco Working Groups 31 voting members voted overwhelmingly two weeks ago to develop an index that brands, manufacturers and suppliers will be able to use to continuously reduce their environmental footprint. By voting to pursue the index, the Eco Working Group opted not to go with a consumer facing label for the time being and focus instead on inward facing metrics that will allow the industry to continually reduce its environmental impact.
“Both are viable ways to go about communicating and ultimately we know we need to communicate to the end consumer,” said Kevin Myette, director of product integrity and R&D for REI and chairman of the groups executive committee. “Part of the problem we are facing now is we are not communicating well internally with our own organizations or industries.”
Creating and implementing the index is both a gargantuan and delicate task since there is not always agreement on how wide a company should cast its net when trying to measure its environmental impact. A survey of 65 outdoor companies conducted last fall for the Eco Working Group found that as many as half of those companies claimed to measure their corporate carbon footprint or some high level product attribute. However, less than 25% used third party certification or measured the impact of transportation, their supply chain or the life cycle of their products. Such inconsistency has made it difficult for consumers to distinguish between companies that are simply greenwashing and ones that are making significant strides toward reducing their environmental impact. That confusion, in turn, neutralizes what ever marketing edge outdoor vendors have in an ever greening economy.
“It underscores exactly why we should be creating an index,” said Myette. “We need to create a common language and common metrics that make it easier to understand our environmental impact.“
The difficult work of hammering out what the index should measure will begin Tuesday when nearly 80 people representing more than 50 organizations convene in Boulder, CO. By the end of the meeting, the Eco Working Group hopes to establish timelines and deliverables for the next two years, said Ann Obenchain, VP of member services and marketing at OIA.
