When it started in 2007, the Outdoor Industry Association’s (OIA) Eco Working Group quickly learned that an industry-wide index measuring environmental sustainability in, for example, product development, manufacturing, and packaging should be easy to read, flexibly modular in scope so that small and large companies alike could apply the guidelines, and sufficiently detailed to address consumer demand for eco-friendly products and vendor quality control requirements.

A couple of epiphanies became readily apparent in the process that brought together more than 140 representatives from more than 80 companies in the outdoor recreation industry. There are no perfect metrics and whatever metrics are used, they should help tell ultimately the story to a consumer who wants to know just how much energy or water went into manufacturing the new pair of trail runners he or she just purchased and if the packaging for those shoes is effectively biodegradable.

“The initial feedback we got was that the draft guidelines were too confusing and cumbersome,” says Ken Stone, a member of the working group and product development manager at Black Diamond, an outdoor equipment manufacturer in Salt Lake City. “Through many iterations, we eventually came up with a set of documents that keeps the end consumer in mind and looks upstream into the supply chain.”

The guidelines are readable and accessible (e.g. five pages for the materials guidelines and three for packaging); as they should be for an industry mindful that proactive voluntary compliance hopefully will serve well as many companies increasingly find their organizational responsibilities go deeper into the supply chain not only with issues of environmental sustainability but also with those involving labor rights, fair trade and internationally recognized quality control standards.

Many of the more than 16,000 participants in the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market, now running at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center in downtown Salt Lake City, will get a solid look at the materials and packaging guidelines that are part of the comprehensive ECO Index which the OIA will formally unveil in August.

The index – comprising guidelines, metrics, and indicators – will be a web-based, user-friendly tool with an a la carte approach that small startups of three employees or multinational companies with thousands of employees in different locations will find equally instructive and applicable, Amy Roberts, OIA’s vice president of governmental affairs, says. “The underlying assumption is to understand that no company could realistically achieve a perfect score but the intent is to make it operationally effective so that we can keep moving the bar upward and forward through the next few years.”

And, Roberts explains the index’s rollout is appropriately timed as the industry expects domestic and international governmental regulations to increase especially on environmental and labor practices. “Hopefully, we’ll be in a proactive position to demonstrate real-life examples that are being implemented and lead to workable standards without the need to make regulations unnecessarily cumbersome and which avoid the punitive economic effects for potential violations.”

The guidelines also reflect existing brand-neutral standards wherever possible so that companies can comfortably leverage research and practical experiences achieved in and out of the industry. Stone notes the group was acutely conscious of avoiding any superfluous, costly duplication of efforts that could confuse retailers and consumers in the end. In fact, each of the guideline sheets will include the following template language:

“[A]re qualitative principles and management practices, intended to be used as an educational tool, promoting continuous environmental improvement for companies and suppliers. They are intended to be more general in nature and provoke thought, further research, and questions. It is each company’s responsibility to apply these Guidelines in a way that is meaningful to their products and business.”

Stone says the working group’s process was consistently open and collaborative and the result is that many companies comfortably can adapt these guidelines to their own internal framework of management and operations. Roberts agrees, adding the Salt Lake City session will include panelists who already have implemented these guidelines. For example, Black Diamond has moved to FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified paper for its in-house manufactured product packaging.

In 2009, Novara Cycling, which is REI’s cycling brand, focused on eliminating unnecessary dunnage and maximizing the environmental impact of unit load capacities on containers. This included a pilot program incorporating Novara bike tubes into a shrink-wrap design that eliminated 98 percent of material used in previous designs. Novara bike accessories also are being customized with 60 percent less material than what was previously used.

Wisely so in keeping with the fundamental objective of making the index guidelines as flexible and as approachable for as many manufacturers and retailers alike, consumers will not see a reductible certifying score or comparable standardized “seal of approval.” The index’s breadth and depth are extensive with guidelines focusing not only on materials and packaging but also forthcoming documents on matters of transportation logistics, end of product life cycles, and manufacturing processes as well as metric lenses on toxicity of chemicals, waste, biodiversity, and land, water, and energy use. The index’s framework not only is conceptualized upon the interests of corporate accountability for environmentally sustainable practices but also those for branding and marketing decisions as individual companies see fit for reaching out and educating their core consumers.

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