Timberland Publicizes Its Footprint

A GREEN King Alert!

I'm having to do a lot of running around this week with a client whose looking to buy a home to retro-fit green. Congrats to TM Gabrielle of Grand I LLC for wanting to do her part as a first time homeowner. TM plans to retro-fit her purchase totally green and we've decided to document the process in my blog on how easy and cost effective it is to go green. Because the new year is just around the corner, I find myself playing catch up. The campaign that we're promoting in January to our commercial clientale, "Greater Transparency" is finally in alignment with the folks at Timberland who recently took steps towards greater transparency by placing information about the shoe's figurative footprint right on the box. The "Our Footprint" label includes three sections:

* "Environmental Impact"” reports the average number of kWh kilowatt-hours that are used to produce a pair of Timberland shoes and the percentage of renewable energy Timberland uses from sources such as the sun, wind and water. Total energy use (measured in kWh and obtained from each factory's utility bills) is divided by footwear production. Each factory gets assigned a weight according to the percent production they do for Timberland. The weighted factory scores are then averaged to produce an average kWh (or energy use) per pair.
* "Community Impact"” details the percentage of factories assessed by Timberland against its Code of Conduct, the percentage of child laborers in factories'’ workforce and the total number of hours Timberland employees volunteered in the previous year.
* "“Manufactured"” tells in what factory and what country the product was made.

The "nutrition label" will be placed on greener boxes made from 100% post-consumer recycled fiber with soy-based inks and water-based solvents. The company's not stopping there, though. They plan to adopt the "Our Footprint" label for apparel, and are also developing a Green Index (which they compare to an Energy Star rating) for measuring their shoes' environmental impact in terms of climate, chemical use and material use.

Since the apparel industry generally does carry a heavy environmental footprint, this is a bold move by Timberland: they're not just saying "We're green(er)," but giving consumers the numbers by which they can judge that statement.

We at SURELEY Green AC believe that because of the recent efforts to monitor green retro-fits by the USGBC (LEED association), that many individuals will go out of their way to verify the labels? This is where the valued is added and will show so in your appraisal. At an informal gathering with the founding chairman, CEO, USGBC President-Rick Fedrizzi, we talked about the policing efforts of the USGBC to remind commercial and residential owners alike the wholistic approach that's to be maintained when greening a building or home. After all green is a lifestyle that creates a toxic free environment which makes for a healthy home owner and employee. So SURELEY Green AC mission to its clients is always to teach the proper guidelines to be in green compliency. We know this is a genuine show of transparency rather than an attempt to greenwash.