Sustainability Reporting at the Product-level Allows Companies to Substantiate ‘Green’ Product Claims

If your organization hasn’t already begun efforts to support sustainability reporting, it might want to start. Especially if it is looking to substantiate ‘green’ product claims – an increasingly important area for manufacturers of products or services that promise eco-friendly or ‘green’ benefits.

As noted in a related article on the subject, Ernst & Young says reporting on “green” product development will provide companies with the opportunity to document the basis for any claims they make. It also will help them collect environmental information about their products as their customers develop supplier sustainability initiatives.

The problem is that the use of terms like ‘green’, 'eco-friendly', or ‘made of 100% recycled materials” can be misleading. To address this growing challenge, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently proposed revisions to its “Green Guides”, including new guidance on marketers’ use of product certifications and seals of approval, “renewable energy” claims, “renewable materials” claims, and “carbon offset” claims.

As noted in the FTC announcement:

The revised Guides caution marketers not to make blanket, general claims that a product is “environmentally friendly” or “eco-friendly” because the FTC’s consumer perception study confirms that such claims are likely to suggest that the product has specific and far-reaching environmental benefits. Very few products, if any, have all the attributes consumers seem to perceive from such claims, making these claims nearly impossible to substantiate.

The proposed Guides also caution marketers not to use unqualified certifications or seals of approval – those that do not specify the basis for the certification. The Guides more prominently state that unqualified product certifications and seals of approval likely constitute general environmental benefit claims, and they advise marketers that the qualifications they apply to certifications or seals should be clear, prominent, and specific.

Next, the proposed revised Guides advise marketers how consumers are likely to understand certain environmental claims, including that a product is degradable, compostable, or “free of” a particular substance. For example, if a marketer claims that a product that is thrown in the trash is “degradable,” it should decompose in a “reasonably short period of time” – no more than one year.

The bottom line? If a product claims to be ‘green’ or ‘eco-friendly’, it better be clear on just exactly what that means, and have the documentation to prove it.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in the related research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.” So, stay tuned. We’ll be providing updates and an opportunity to participate in the research in the weeks and months ahead.

See also:

Federal Trade Commission Proposes Revised “Green Guides”

FTC Green Guides’ Proposed Revisions Unveiled

Seven Questions to Ask about Sustainability Reports

Eco-design Gets a Boost from Autodesk, Granta Partnership

“Better, faster, cheaper…” Sound familiar? For decades now, and even – perhaps centuries – these words have guided product designers and engineers in their quest to deliver the right products to market, gain market share and drive revenue growth.

But, increasingly manufactureres are getting the message -- it's what's inside that counts.

Today, it’s simply not enough to optimize designs in terms of price/performance alone. Instead, such criteria as materials toxicity, energy efficiency, carbon footprint, and water footprint must figure into the equation as well. That’s where sustainable product design – which takes a more holistic approach to product development - can help.

Sustainable product design, however, requires new approaches to educating and equipping the next generation of engineers and designers. Fortunately, we’ve begun to see a rise in both technology to support this effort, and sustainable engineering programs and curriculums in universities and training programs to bridge this gap in understanding.

For example, as part of an effort to help engineers and designers more effectively incorporate sustainable materials during product development, Autodesk recently announced an important new partnership with leading materials information technology provider, Granta Design, Ltd. The goal? To simplify the process for specifying suitable, safe and eco-friendly materials during the product design phase – making it easier for industrial designers, mechanical engineers and others to create products through sustainable design.

According to the announcement, the companies will be working together to integrate Granta’s eco design methods into Autodesk software, helping designers to estimate the environmental impact of a product and make more sustainable design decisions. Ultimately, such technology could prove to be of great value in helping companies to both anticipate and avoid the risks and penalties associated with the use of materials that might later be identified as hazardous or restricted, as well.

Indeed, managing restricted substances during product design has become increasingly important for manufacturers. As noted by Grant Design’s Kim Marshall and David Cebon in a presentation made earlier this year:

Restricted substances legislation, such as the European Union's REACH regulation, create major challenges for engineering enterprises.  They impose stringent compliance and reporting requirements on companies.  They also introduce significant risk of withdrawal of substances and consequent obsolescence of mission-critical materials, ‘preparations’ (coatings, cleaning agents, working fluids, etc) and manufacturing processes that use them.  This can affect current products: where it can necessitate expensive materials substitution and re-qualification of components.  It can also affect the design of future products: where it is essential to avoid using substances that may become obsolete in future.  Shipping products containing banned substances – knowingly or not – can have severe legal and financial consequences for companies and responsible individuals, and can present substantial risk to business continuity.

Earlier this month, Autodesk also introduced the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop , a new online portal that offers free sustainability resources and educational content. Aimed at mechanical engineers and educators, the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop features lessons that illustrate the principles and practice of sustainable design, such as Whole Systems Design and Lightweighting.

As Jeremy Faludi, a lecturer for the Joint Program in Design at Stanford University and collaborator on the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop puts it, “Thinking back five years ago, or even one year ago, mechanical engineering students didn’t have good resources available to think about sustainable design practices.  This Workshop provides students with inspiration, technical depth on implementation, and innovative sustainable design strategies.”

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in the related research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.” So, stay tuned. We’ll be providing updates and an opportunity to participate in the research in the weeks and months ahead.

To learn more, see:

Autodesk and Granta Partner to Help Enable Sustainable Product Design

Autodesk Introduces Free Sustainability Resources for Engineering Students, Educators

Sustainability Consortium Adopts PE International’s GaBi Tool to Perform LCA

PE Americas recently announced that it has joined The Sustainability Consortium, an independent group of research scientists and engineers dedicated to examining the issues and challenges surrounding sustainable product design and development. Spearheaded by retail giant Walmart in July 2009, one of the early charters identified for the consortium was to define standards and metrics for measuring and reporting on sustainability at the product level – in particular, for manufacturers and suppliers serving the retail market.

“One of the reasons we exist is because existing efforts to measure and report product sustainability have been fragmented and partial, in terms of their scope, the impacts of concern, or the life cycle stage being addressed,” says Dr. Kevin J. Dooley, Co-Director of the Sustainability Consortium. “Our approach seeks to capture all environmental and social impacts across the whole life cycle of a product,” he explains.

The real challenge is that the terms sustainable, environmentally-friendly, eco-friendly and green are often used interchangeably, resulting in a great deal of confusion in the marketplace as to precisely what sustainability means – both for manufacturers and for the consumer community. Ultimately, if the consortium is successful in its mission, it stands to have a significant impact on how consumer products are designed and developed if they are going to be labeled, ‘sustainable.’

One of the key questions? How such an organization might leverage existing commercial tools and methodologies to assist in this effort. With the addition of PE Americas, at least part of the answer is evident.  As Dooley puts it, "PE Americas will help us build a scientifically rigorous system to measure and report the sustainability of consumer products in a standardized manner. Together we will spur a new generation of products and supply networks that address environmental, social, and economic imperatives."

More specifically, the organization states that, “To quantify product impacts, the Sustainability Consortium will be using PE International's GaBi LCA program, a powerful, fully‐featured software platform that supports the collection, organization, analysis, and monitoring of the environmental performance of products and processes.”
 

What this means with respect to the use of other commercially available LCA tools or methodologies is unclear, since the Sustainability Consortium specifically states that it ‘advocates for a scientifically grounded process and transparent system, not for individuals or organizations.’ But it certainly serves as a tribute to both the sustainability consulting expertise of the PE Americas organization, and to the capabilities of PE International’s GaBi product lifecycle assessment tool for measuring product impacts.

See also:

PE Americas Is Now a Member of the Sustainability Consortium

Sustainability will 'Define the Next Wave of Prosperity'

“Sustainable business is not only here to stay, it will ‘define the next wave of prosperity,’ says BSR president and CEO, Aron Cramer.

Author of the new book, Sustainable Excellence: The Future of Business in a Fast-Changing World (Rodale Books, October 2010) Cramer believes that, “the businesses that build social and environmental considerations into the DNA of their companies will survive and thrive in the years to come." Examining this issue in more depth, the book describes how companies are adapting their strategies to meet the challenges of a world characterized by depleting natural resources, climate change, rising consumer expectations, and “radical transparency” and makes the case for embracing sustainability  to drive business success.

The topic is not a new one for Cramer. As noted in an excerpt from a blog post that he shared with Fast Company readers earlier this year:

…many have wondered whether the "green bubble" would burst the same way the tech bubble and the housing bubble did. Would sustainability follow Lehman Brothers into the pages of history, a relic of the good times? As we go into 2010, it's clear that sustainable business is not only here to stay, it will define the next wave of prosperity.

Consider the evidence: The number of sustainability reports--where companies report their performance against social and environmental criteria--continues to increase, according to the Global Reporting Initiative. Sustainability is everywhere on the agenda of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, January 27-31, 2010. And nearly nine out of ten business leaders surveyed at our recent BSR Conference said their companies' sustainability budgets would stay the same or increase this year. Suffice to say, the predictions that companies would abandon their commitments to corporate responsibility have not come true, and sustainability is as critical a business imperative as ever.

It's turned out this way for three main reasons.

There's money to be made. Recessions, even "Great" ones, come and go. When historians look back on the annus horribilis of 2009, they will likely conclude that the sharp increase in commodity prices was more a sign of the future than the sharp fall in share prices and employment. The prices of core materials like oil, wheat, and iron shot through the roof during the first part of the year. Conflict erupted as supplies of food, water, and energy dramatically dropped, and businesses battled over the competing uses of commodities such as biofuels and food. All this convinced the C-suite that resource inefficiencies are a material risk to their businesses today, and will be even more so tomorrow. To outlast the Great Recessions, companies have to improve resource efficiency to position themselves for success.

Despite (warranted) concerns about short-term thinking, business actually does look to the future. Look no further than the strong and growing business constituency for action on climate change. While governments move slowly on Capitol Hill and in Copenhagen, business leaders (and NGOs) are making the case for action. Executives responded to the tepid outcome in Copenhagen with a cry for governments to do better. Deutsche Bank Vice Chairman Caio Koch-Weser put it this way: "A strong deal is essential to create the rules, price signals, and risk-return incentives that business needs." Shell CEO Peter Voser called for "much more" to happen to build a strong deal on climate. They are doing this because they know that a price on carbon is coming, and they need to start planning their future today.

Society's expectations have changed--forever. There's just no turning back. Can you imagine the response if companies pulled back from their efforts to protect labor practices in their supply chains? If companies stopped providing information about energy and water use, or workplace diversity? Consumers--and the media--now view such activities as another dimension of product quality, and they're not considered optional.

Critics of sustainability have been planning its funeral several times in recent years. They have missed what most business leaders now know: Over the next half century, winning companies will be those that roll up their sleeves and build solutions to our most pressing global challenges. We need businesses that devote themselves to delivering a climate-friendly energy system, making efficient use of scarce natural resources, and creating efficient transportation for mega-cities. And because companies are waking up to the fact that this is where tomorrow's markets will be made, more and more are on that journey.

Wow. If you’re still not convinced that sustainability has become an important driver in today’s global business environment, think again. Cramer isn’t the only one who believes that sustainability’s time has come.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in the related research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.” So, stay tuned. We’ll be providing updates and an opportunity to participate in the research in the weeks and months ahead.

See also:

New Book by BSR’s Aaron Cramer: Sustainable Excellence is Key to Business Success in a Fast-Changing World

How Sustainability Survived the Great Recession