Nike Inc. Renews Commitment to Sustainability

Nike Inc. CEO Mark Parker with London 2012 Collection

With the release of its 2010-2011 Sustainable Business Performance Summary, in an ultra-high profile Olympic year, apparel giant Nike Inc. has reinforced its commitment to installing and maintaining sustainable business practices throughout its supply chain.

“Nike is known globally for our innovative performance products and sustainability has now increasingly become core to our business approach,” said Nike, Inc. President and CEO Mark Parker. “We have continuously invested in reducing our environmental and social impacts within our own business and supply chain and have made substantial gains over the last decade. We know we cannot achieve our bold sustainability goals simply by delivering incremental improvements. We need to deliver innovations that rapidly evolve the way things are done at Nike, in our industry and throughout business.”

Reporting for the May 4, 2012 edition of Transworld Business, Kelli Hargrove writes:

Nike also debuted its new factory rating system, the Manufacturing Index, which takes a look at the factory’s overall performance in hopes to see how a factory approaches true sustainability. The Index compares labor and environmental performance to traditional supply chain measures of quality, cost and on-time delivery.

After over 2 years of development, Nike has also launched its Sourcing & Manufacturing Sustainability Index (SMSI), a component of the overall Manufacturing Index, which will analyze factory performance on sustainability measures including measures of lean, environmental performance (including water, energy and carbon, and waste), health and safety, and labor management factors.

The summary reiterates Nike’s determination to focus heavily on the role of innovation, transparency and collaboration in working through sustainability issues. Thus far, Nike has made progress against most of its previous targets, including waste reduction in footwear manufacturing, utilizing its Considered Design Index guidelines in product design and implementing Human Resource Management training programs in contracted factories. In some areas, for example carbon emissions, where progress was slower than anticipated, Nike has changed its approach and redesigned its factory evaluation and sourcing criteria to improve performance in the long-term.

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