ASU’s venture into sustainability is gaining strength as the Sustainability Consortium welcomes new memberships in several retailers and manufacturers.The consortium recently teamed with Best Buy, General Mills, SC Johnson and Intel to explore the sustainability of different products throughout their life cycles.

“We want to take each industry’s standard and find out how they can fit into a common metric of sustainability,” said Kevin Dooley, a professor of supply chain management at the W. P. Carey School of Business and the coordinator of the Electronics Sector for the consortium.

The product of a partnership between ASU and the University of Arkansas, with initial funding provided by Walmart, the consortium is an independent organization comprised of professors, researchers and students from both universities.

Joby Carlson, coordinator of the Chemical and Intensive Products Sector, said the consortium’s goal is to examine products, measure their sustainability and create an all-encompassing standard that retailers and manufacturers can employ.

“Our basic understanding, and what we’ve heard from the retailers that we work with, is that there is a lot of confusion to what is really true about these products you see on the shelves,” he said.

The consortium is divided into sectors, each of which focuses on a specific kind of product.

“The work that we’re doing is focusing on the underlying science,” Dooley said. “We’re not creating something that substitutes the EPA [Energy Star rating], but rather something that maps out what the product’s environmental impact is.”

The Environmental Protection Agency and other organizations are regularly updated on the consortium’s progress, Dooley said.

“We look to them for feedback and suggestions,” Dooley said.

Carlson’s sector focuses on household products like laundry detergent, cosmetics and shampoo.

“We’re not aiming for just a few green products,” he said. “We’re hoping to transition the way business is done in America and in supply chains.”

The participating retailers and manufacturers hope to provide validity and reassurance to customers about the products they purchase, said Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg.

“What this is all about is doing a better job for the customers,” he said. “If we can do this right, [it] will drive higher quality and lower costs, more innovative products … [and] a transparent supply chain. We think it’ll make Walmart a stronger business and bring us closer to our customers and their needs in the next 20 to 25 years.”

The consortium hopes to build upon the standards already set by rating systems like Energy Star and not reinvent the wheel, said Carole Mars, lead researcher of the Electronics Sector. Mars is in charge of reporting those existing criterion.

“For the most part, the schemes and the labels that are out there right now have a very specific focus,” she said. “One of our goals is to figure out how to get all of these labels together to show one great continuous reporting of the entire life cycle of a product.”

While the involvement of various companies may cause concerns regarding the consortium’s credibility, some ASU students don’t believe this will be an issue.

“Walmart ... came to us saying they wanted to do a sustainability index,” said Emily Freeman, a sustainability graduate student. “We have a right as researchers to provide truthful data that’s not going to be skewed … we are going to be able to provide an unbiased report.”

Though their initial goals are challenging, the consortium is already looking to the future.

“As [the project] matures, our focus will shift from measurement and reporting. We’ll expand our scope to focus on innovation,” Dooley said. “We’re engaging many companies that haven’t been involved with ASU before. This expands our network and it creates opportunities for the university outside of the sustainability consortium.”

Reach the reporter at joseph.schmidt@asu.edu