Index Overview
The Considered Design Index: Footwear Target
Nike completed its inaugural Considered Footwear Index for spring 2009. Other activity in FY07-09 included sharing the index with senior leadership and rolling it out to all product categories, liaison offices and the footwear manufacturing base. We also trained all Nike global footwear development staff in the use of the Index.
The Considered Design Index: Apparel Target
In FY07/08, Nike created interim, manual indexes for fall 2008, spring 2009 and holiday 2009 product lines. In FY09, we rolled out the online, full Index to leadership, product creation teams and liaison offices. Spring 2010 will mark the first apparel product in the marketplace developed using the new, online Considered Index as well as progress reporting.
The Considered Design Index: Equipment Target
In FY08 we began assessing the need for an equipment index, including the challenges of vastly different products (from soccer balls to watches to golf clubs). We are working on the creation of a Universal Product Index for equipment.
Background
Nike's Considered Design ethos combines the highest aspiration for sustainable design with detailed measurement to ensure that what we design and create, both as individual products and across our entire product line meet the exacting standards required to earn the Considered label. We know that one good waste-reduction effort or recycled-content shoe is not good enough. We're held accountable for making progress and applying sustainable innovation in every product.
Our Considered journey builds on foundational programs dating back to the early 1990s. We are now realizing benefits from integration into the business with new processes and products.
It is our design ethos that elevates Nike's approach. In order for a product to be identified as "Considered" it has to earn the label by meeting specific requirements. To measure how sustainable a product is we've created the Nike Considered Index. The Index metrics are based on more than a decade of innovation and research on materials, solid waste, fabric treatments and solvent use. It not only evaluates product sustainability, it serves as an educational tool for Nike's product creation teams. Environmental issues can be extremely complex and the Considered Index enables our teams to focus on understanding the impacts their product components have on the environment and how they can be reduced.
Nike Considered Index Components
Fundamentally, the Index is a product creation tool, allowing Nike teams to focus on environmental sustainability as product is being taken through the design and development process. As such, the tool does not currently evaluate elements such as packaging or transportation. These very significant environmental aspects (and others) are the focus of separate, but integrated initiatives discussed elsewhere in this report.
- The Index is a systems-integrated, online tool for evaluating the predicted environmental footprint of a product prior to commercialization. Wherever possible, the Index system retrieves product information automatically from Nike databases, increasing the accuracy and ease of using the tool
- This system examines the largest environmental impacts for Nike products. The impacts were defined and prioritized starting in 2002, by assessing the environmental footprint of Nike footwear and apparel. The key impacts are solvent use, waste, materials and energy
- The Index metrics are based on more than a decade of collecting solid waste and solvent use data in footwear, and the examination of waste footprints in hundreds of apparel and footwear products across all sport categories. The metrics also take into consideration the evaluation of the most common commercial materials used to manufacture Nike products using lifecycle thinking
- Products are assigned a Considered score using the Index framework based on Nike's known footprint in these areas. Only products whose score is significantly better than the corporate average can be designated as Considered
Specifically, the Nike Considered Index evaluates solvents, waste, materials, garment treatments and innovation. Click here for more detail.
Scoring and Labeling Product
Using the Index framework components described above, products are assigned a "Considered" score based on Nike's assessed footprint. This includes a baseline standard and a Considered standard.
The baseline standard, used for broad goal setting, recognizes steps already taken toward the environmental sustainability of the product. Products meeting the baseline are not part of the Considered line but their scoring helps designers understand and assess a starting point for that product.
The Considered standard is achieved by products with scores that significantly exceed the baseline. These products earn the Considered designation.
Considered Index: The Tool
To advance industry-wide adoption of best practice in sustainable product design, we will make a version of our Considered Index available widely for reference and to build upon. In FY10 we will post manual, non-systems-dependent versions of our Considered Footwear and Apparel Indexes online.
The Considered Footwear and Apparel Indexes that Nike uses to score products depend on product creation tools, systems and databases unique to Nike. By their nature, they are not transferable to other footwear or apparel companies. The non-systems-dependent versions will provide a greatly simplified version that provides a framework to allow product creation teams in other companies to review and assess the most critical aspects of a product's environmental footprint throughout their R&D process. These Excel-based versions do not provide the granularity and detail at which Nike evaluates and scores its own products.
We also anticipate sharing our full indexes through GreenXchange.
Collaboration
We believe that sharing what we have learned will unleash a faster pace for change across the industry. To build greater understanding and achieve real breakthroughs we need to address key issues more broadly, more collectively.
For example, water is a key concern on the global agenda. We know that the apparel industry in particular uses a considerable amount of water for dyeing and finishing processes. Two of the materials we use most rely heavily on natural resources: cotton on water and polyester on petroleum. We must be able to address future needs for materials, to find ways to use materials again and again.
But what if we could dye without water? How can we plant the seeds needed to move toward more sustainable products? These questions are not specific to Nike. They are dilemmas that face our industry and the world.
To this end, collaboration can help. The more people, the more companies working on these problems and seeking breakthroughs, the more likely we all are to find solutions that can be brought to scale and made viable.
We share what we have developed, as we have with breakthroughs such as formulations for environmentally preferred rubber. And we encourage others to share their insights and developments, to take ideas and run with them, to let us - and others - know what they've learned.
To facilitate this type of sharing we have partnered with Creative Commons to create GreenXchange. This platform, which Nike and other business partners will release in 2010, will encourage trial and innovation, as well as the opening and sharing of patents and other ideas, some on a fee-for-use basis and others in a manner that can be studied and built upon.
We are raising the profile of such work on the global stage, including the World Economic Forum, where leaders in government, business and others begin to understand the value of sharing information and solving problems together without continuously tapping the earth's resources.
On the Horizon
Every season brings new learnings and feedback from our product creation teams on how we can improve the Considered Index from both interface and content standpoints. We anticipate the future will bring continual enhancement of the current index, as well as development of a more universal tool for evaluating the environmental aspects of all Nike products.