The Sustainable Product Index is a project that aims to bring simplicity to understanding how and why a product is sustainable. The ultimate goal is to help socially conscious consumers make informed purchase decisions.
Sustainability is hard to measure. There are lots of methods and frameworks available but understanding these tends to be out of reach to the average consumer. No one has yet made it easy for end users to fully appreciate how the products they purchase compare to others on the 3 main pillars of sustainability (environmental, social, and economical).
The complexity and ambiguity of what makes a product sustainable opens up opportunities for bad actors to greenwash their product propositions and fool customers into thinking they are making an environmentally positive purchase. Our end goal is to understand how companies can best present the sustainable nature of their products to inform potential customers of the facts in an easy-to-digest way.
Initially, our project is all about measuring how companies are currenlty ‘doing sustainability’. Lots of companies talk a big game when it comes to promoting their efforts on this topic, but we really want to understand the ins and outs of how and why a business can claim to be a sustainable enterprise. This is the learning phase of the Sustainable Product Index.
With what we learn about how different organisations are currently approaching their sustainability efforts, we will produce a benchmarking report (the first iteration of this is available now). We want to empower business owners to be able to test themselves against others with similar values.
In the long term, our goal is to provide insights for those currently on or looking to start a sustainability journey within their organisation. Using our own research and augmenting it with other data we want to support businesses with information that will help them understand the path they’re on and where to direct their efforts next.
There are benefits to becoming a contributor to our research, first and foremost you’ll get first-look access to any future reports. Becoming an SPI contributor is easy (typically takes no more than 20 minutes). Register your interest here to be notified of our next survey round.
Register Interest
Understanding how other businesses approach sustainability planning helps us to drive our own efforts forward