Green is the way to go!
Jan 20th, 2012 by raissac
Last year, Nike was one of the companies that joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. This 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. Just like the companies in this coalition, Nike is finally about to unveil their own product index called the Materials Sustainability Index (MSI). It took them at least eight years of research to determine the sustainability of the materials they use in making their products. Nike is teamed up with a software startup company called Earthster to publish their MSI.
I am impressed that these big and powerful companies have partnered up to make their own sustainability indexes for the products they produce. The coalition also has companies such as Walmart and Patagonia as participants. These companies are leaders in their respective industries and will hopefully be able to encourage smaller companies to do the same. This initiative will also create awareness among product designers whenever they are working to produce the company’s products. This index will help them understand the environmental impacts of their work by enabling them to be more thoughtful of their choices in terms of which materials to use to produce footwear and apparel.
Nike aims to spark conversation about using sustainable materials among individuals. With this goal, I believe that Nike and the other members of the coalition will be able to make a necessary change on producers with their actions in terms of the materials they use in producing company goods. This initiative is quite new and I am certain that the world won’t see immediate changes. However, it is good that these leading companies are setting a good example to other companies and individuals worldwide.
Seeing that sustainability is definitely a rising trend in our world today, I think that it will be easier to convince people on the mission of this initiative and get them to jump on the “go green” bandwagon as well. If everyone is on board with this movement, we will slowly see positive changes in our world. Eventually, this initiative may be able to reduce harmful impacts to our environment and at the same time, benefit companies as they reduce their costs and risks.
For more information on this coalition, please see this article
.