The Sustainability Consortium, Two Years Later

A couple of years ago at VIRGO’s Focus on the Future conference, a gentleman from Arizona State University—representing the Sustainability Consortium—spoke about Wal-Mart’s then-new mandates to their suppliers regarding sourcing, supply chain management and post-consumer waste. As I recall, he was quite optimistic even in the face of some pretty tall orders that the company was asking of the companies whose products line the shelves of the retailer. The Sustainability Consortium was largely funded by Wal-Mart, with the intent to have many companies sign on in order to share best practices and vet products. While other retailers haven’t climbed on board (go figure) TSC has been joined by many companies that sell products through Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart’s initiatives were indeed transformative as they spurred major brands to find more innovative ways to reduce their carbon footprint and to begin having a more transparent dialogue with consumers and investors. Once Wal-Mart threw down the gauntlet, it seems an entire industry cropped up. That is, the Sustainability Industry. Just Google “Sustainability Conferences" if you want to make your head spin.

A couple of years into the endeavor, Wal-Mart seems to be backing down a bit—particularly on developing product rating labels letting consumers know the “greenness" of the product they’re considering. Why? In short, because establishing credible guidelines and measuring outcomes is just crazy complicated. So complex, that in the two years since the Sustainability Consortium has existed, it has closely examined only seven products.

It is particularly confusing to inspect a wide swath of product types, like Wal-Mart is attempting. Yet various indices still attempt to rate companies’ performances across multiple sustainability metrics. One of the most prestigious, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, released new results last week. The big news in the food industry was the removal of Coca-Cola, although as of this morning, Coke’s Sustainability website still carried the Dow Jones Sustainability Index logo.

Indices that specialize may actually do better. For instance, Swiss bank Sarasin published a rating in December of global food and beverage companies. While it is “marketed" as an investment guide, their report makes fascinating reading about how mega-companies bring foods to our table.

Good Guide (a favorite of mine for a couple years now) rates thousands of foods, personal care items and some household goods along three tiers: health, environment and society. What they’re particularly good at is dicing apart ingredients and putting a big red mark on known toxins. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition was formed by large clothing producers in order to establish cleaner best practices relative to one industry. They’ve developed an “Eco Index" to measure the environmental impact of clothing manufacturing.

Chances are we will soon see more groups devoted to better practices within specific industries, which will be a good thing. The more we know about the impact of what we consume, the better for our personal health and well-being. And the more pressure on companies to source with a conscience, to find manufacturing efficiencies and reduce waste, the better for the health of our world.