By John DeFore

Green-sensitive retailers here and there have begun to experiment with ways of giving customers an idea of the environmental impact of their wares, but most observers admit we’re a long way from having an eco-standard format like the Nutritional Data chart on the side of a box of corn flakes. There are simply too many variables involved for most efforts to be more than a “best guess.” Outdoor-gear merchant Patagonia, though, has a better chance than most of coming up with realistic figures: As retailers who design and manufacture their own goods (and who have long made environmentalism part of the business plan), they’re in a better position than Wal-Mart or Macy’s to chronicle exactly how something got from the drawing board to your shopping cart.

Patagonia makes some of that information available on its recently Webby-nominated Footprint Chronicles mini-site, a bit of corporate communication that’s informative and even kind of fun. Visitors select an item from the company’s catalog — a “Puckerware” shirt, for example, or the “Sugar & Spice” shoe — and are greeted with a map whose dotted arrow resembles the path of Indiana Jones’s globe-hopping airplane. We learn that an item was designed here; the raw materials were made there; those were shipped to another spot to be stitched together and then transported to retailers back home.

In each case, four metrics are prominently summarized: the total distance traveled, the CO2 expended during the process, the amount of waste generated, and the energy required to make each unit of a given item. The measurements aren’t abstract, but are put into context: Manufacturing a strappy dress produces an amount of CO2 equal to 46 times the dress’s own weight; it requires enough energy to run an 18W CFL bulb for 78 days. The company goes further in each case, analyzing the pros and cons (in the case of the dress, they admit that they can’t account for its 9% spandex content since they buy it as a commodity rather than producing it) and offering ideas for possible improvement.

“Caveat: These examinations are partial and preliminary,” reads a paragraph on the company’s explanatory page. Each season we’ll examine a few new products. As we learn more, the picture will gain more focus through the haze. And the more we see, and then give some thought, the more bad practices we’ll be able to change with all the speed we can muster.” Until then, it’s a much fuller picture than you’re likely to get of the impact behind most everyday purchases.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media