How We Drive More Sustainable Choices: Considered Design
The materials in just our NIKE Brand footwear and apparel
products come from 900 different material vendors (i.e., supplier
companies). We do not source directly with these vendors; they are
independent companies that sell materials to our contract finishedgoods
manufacturers based on our design specifications. To drive
sustainability improvements in materials, we focus on the part of the
value chain over which we have the most control: product design.2
Decisions made in the product design phase determine the majority of
a product’s environmental impacts. Nike teams design products with
very detailed material specifications, and by providing those teams
with the information they need to choose better materials from better
vendors, we can improve the sustainability of our products.
To do this, in 2006 we introduced Considered Design. This design ethos
– together with evaluation systems for footwear and apparel that we call
the Considered Indexes – enables our product-creation teams to easily
compare materials and make informed, sustainable choices during
the design phase. The Considered Indexes represent years of research
and analysis of materials and their environmental impacts (including
energy use, GHG emissions, water use, land use, waste and chemical
use) and consolidates that information with the major manufacturing
environmental impacts (waste and solvents) into a decision-making tool
that our teams can use to score their footwear and apparel designs in
just minutes.
We provide our product creation teams with extensive training in how
to use the Considered Indexes and on the importance of focusing on the
sustainability of materials. The teams are given scoring targets for each
season of products they design. In the current version of the Considered
Indexes, materials make up 35 percent of the score for footwear and
60 percent of the score for apparel, so it’s clear to the design teams that
focusing on materials is an effective way to meet their goals.
While the Considered Indexes have been used primarily by the NIKE
Brand, our Affiliate brands have also begun introducing and using
them to evaluate their product designs and have committed to adopt
the indexes by the end of FY15. For example, Hurley International
scored selected apparel designs in FY11.