Sustainable Apparel Rating tool set for mid-year launch
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition appointed its appointed its first executive director on the cusp of its first-year anniversary and will start tweaking its Apparel Index rating tool for a mid-2012 public release.
The Apparel Index aims to help companies understand the ingredeints in their products and the impacts of their supply chains, essentially acting as a measuring stick for sustainability, said executive director Jason Kibbey, who took his position at the start of the year.
Before joining the Coalition, Mr Kibbey was co-founder and CEO of PACT, a company that makes organic underwear, socks and shirts, working with a Turkish company that has all of its manufacturing processes in a short supply chain. A portion of sales goes to various non-profit partners.
"I got involved with PACT partially because I saw the potential to create a different kind of brand that could ideally change how people thought about buying apparel," Mr Kibbey said. "I felt like this (the Coalition) was an opportunity to do the same thing.... It's so often you have small, well-meaning efforts that try to gain the attention of big influencers or big holders of power. This is quite the opposite."
Since its launch in March 2011, the Coalition's member list has grown to represent 30% by sales of the worldwide apparel industry, including clothing companies like adidas, Columbia Sportswear, Gap, H&M, Nike and Patagonia, and retailers JC Penney, Kohl's, REI, Target, Wal-Mart and others.
In the last year some 80 companies have tested a beta version of the Apparel Index on several hundred products, Mr Kibbey said. Now the Coalition is taking all the feedback they've gotten and will work on the first version of the Index, slated for release in June or July 2012.
The Apparel Index will be freely available from the Coalition's website. "What we want more than anything is broad adoption," Mr Kibbey said.
The Apparel Index is based heavily on the Eco Index started by the Outdoor Industry Association and Nike's environmental design tool, and the first version will primarily cover sustainability and environmental factors: materials, packaging, manufacturing processes, transportation. Mr Kibbey said the Coalition will modify the Index later in the year to include social and labour considerations, and it's also working on a Footwear Index this year.
