This summer Walmart announced that they would be establishing scientific benchmarks for sustainability of all products sold in their stores. The early workings of that system led to the establishment of the Sustainability Consortium as an independent group of global scientists and engineers from leading academic research institutions who engage with other leading researchers from the NGO, governmental and industrial sectors. The co-chairmen are Dr. Jay Golden from Arizona State University and Dr. Jon Johnson from University of Arkansas. The primary function of the Consortium is to develop the science to support the indexing of consumer products that are evaluated in a Life Cycle Assessment. The organization was launched in August 2009.
Despite what some thought, this organization is not developing a Sustainability Index. Instead they are developing peer-reviewed standards and systems for Sustainable Product Index reporting. The impacts of products are being researched throughout all phases of product life. Any gaps or uncertainty in the data are being identified and improved for the modeling or reporting on the LCA through scientific examinations of algorithms.
Their new data software tool will be rolled out for Beta testing in early 2010. This database would be an entry to the US LCI database and other databases, but also feeds into the Sustainability Consortium’s EcoInvent software.
More information can be found at www.sustainabilityconsortium.org.