Some day in the not too distant future, the clothes and shoes you buy will not only have a label sewn in with the brand name/size/fabric content, 
but with a sustainability score as well. Yesterday’s New York Times (Mar. 1, 2011) reports that the Sustainable Apparel Coalition is developing a comprehensive database of the environmental impact of every manufacturer, component, and process in apparel and shoe production. The coalition includes such names as Wal-Mart, JC Penney, Hanes, Patagonia, and Timberland.
Americans spent $340 billion last year on clothes and shoes, which is about a quarter of the global market. Amazingly, virtually all of it purchased here—99% of footwear and 98% of clothes–came from other countries. And the various parts of any one garment often come from a diverse multinational chain of fabric mills, dye operations, and assembly plants.
This obscure nature of the global supply chain has long been a concern to environmental groups. Greenpeace, for example, using Google Maps, revealed that a blue jean factory in Xintang, China, was washing blue chemicals downriver from its textile mill. But the company whose name appears on the designer label– and surely the end customer–are often unaware of the environmental connection. “The apparel supply chain is long and quite complicated”, states a University of Delaware prof.
The coalition’s tool is a database of scores assigned to all players in the garment life cycle–cotton growers, fabric makers, dyers, mill owners, and distributors–based on measures such as water use, energy efficiency, waste, chemical use, greenhouse gases, and labor practices. “The government has standards for miles per gallon on a car, but we have no real standards for clothing”, adds the CEO of Timberland.
Discussion questions:
1. Are students interested in such a “green score”?
2. What changes will such a database bring about?
3. Why are the biggest retailers signing on?