Reading for day 4

GreenBuz: March 31, 2008

Taking Care of Business
What's your footprint?It's a question being asked increasingly of both large and small companies. And it can be tough to answer. There's no standard definition or measurement of "footprint." In some contexts, it refers mainly to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions: a company's "carbon footprint." In others it refers to the full measure of impacts involved with designing products, sourcing materials, manufacturing, distribution, and sales -- and sometimes the use and disposal of products. In either case, figuring out what to count can involve equal parts art and science.Patagonia, the innovative and maverick clothing company, recently launched an interactive website describing in words and pictures the footprint of representative products. It's a fun visual tour of a typical product's path around the world. But it's much more than that, of course. It's also a chance for companies and their customers to assess a given product's biggest impacts, sometimes with surprising results. For example, Patagonia found that transportation represents a much smaller portion of energy use than previously thought.Patagonia isn't alone. Many companies are assessing their footprint, especially for carbon, and a few are disclosing them publicly, as columnist Coral Rose reported last year.It's a promising trend. As companies more fully understand their impacts, they will be better able to find opportunities for reducing emissions and costs, and their customers will be better able to make smart choices, reducing their impacts, too.

-- Joel Makower, Executive Editor

Please read the article below and then go to the Patagonia web site to review the Footprint Chronicles ( http://www.patagonia.com/web/us/footprint/index.jsp )

Patagonia Shares Eco-Footprint of Select Products with Consumers ( http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2008/03/25/patagonia-shares-eco-footprint-select-products-with-consumers )
By GreenBiz Staff
March 25, 2008
Patagonia unveiled last fall a microsite that examines the footprint of select products as part of a consumer education experiment.The company plans to track the paths of 10 more products this year, sharing what it has found as it looks at each product's environmental footprint from the design studio to its distribution center in Reno, Nevada, according to Fast Company magazine.So far, the Footprint Chronicles has turned up a few surprises, such as the fact that transportation of goods represents a much smaller percentage of total energy use in its supply chain; manufacturing of products accounted for far greater energy consumption."If we had followed environmental chatter and spent all that time shortening our supply chains, it would have had a huge impact on our product quality," Jill Dumain, Patagonia's director of environmental analysis, told the magazine. "To realize that our conservation efforts needed to be focused elsewhere was really freeing."The company also was open about its negative findings. For instance, its Eco Rain Shell jacket is made of recycled polyester components that save energy and produce little waste, yet the shell's water-repellent finish contains perfluorooctanoic acid, which accumulates in the bloodstream and may be toxic.Although the company believes removing the coating would sacrifice performance, one consumer called for its removal after learning about it on the website. Patagonia is trying to remove the chemical from its product lines.