Linda Peia
Sustainable Brands
#SB15SD
With nearly 500 eco-labels in 200 countries and across 25 industry sectors, it is easy for both consumers and producers to get confused. A Thursday morning panel at SB ’15 San Diego featuring Sheila Bonini, CEO of The Sustainability Consortium (TSC), and Adam Gordon, Supply Chain Account Manager at CDP, shared two innovative ways of addressing that challenge.
The Sustainability Consortium seeks to leverage and integrate existing metrics in order to make it more efficient and clear for companies to measure their sustainability impact. To do so, it works at the product category level and develops metrics for the biggest sustainability issues along the product lifecycle (‘hot spots’). Instead of reinventing the metrics, The Consortium partners with organizations that have already developed metrics in particular sectors.
“When you look at the same product category you can capture the same hotspots. It is a system that enables harmonization and that gets the best of what’s already out there,” Bonini said. Up to now TSC has completed 110 product categories covering 60-80 percent of consumer goods impacts. CDP takes a similar integrative approach. It seeks to reduce the burden through a one-time reporting system that is connected to other independent reporting systems.
Read the full article on Sustainable Brands.