What is Nike MSI?
Nike Materials Sustainability Index (Nike MSI) is a material evaluation tool implemented in early 2011 as a result of eight years of research and development since 2003. Nike developed its own material sustainability index with the ultimate goal of guiding product creation teams to select materials that have low environmental impacts. Considering that materials represent approximately 60% of the environmental impact of Nike’s products, Nike MSI measures relative material scores for each of more than 80,000 materials available from 1400 suppliers.
How does Nike MSI have an impact on the company?
The score of each material is derived from both the Nike apparel and footwear sustainability indexes. Nike MSI has progressively helped product designers and creators make informed, real-time decisions. Their decisions are primarily concerned with the different environmental impacts of materials during the product creation process. Nike MSI is more so a tool for designers to influence their regards to sustainability issues.
Scoring Framework
Nike MSI examines materials from the beginning, the origin of raw materials, to the finished textile or component part. Nike MSI looks at both naturally sourced (plant, animal or mineral based) and synthetic (fossil fuel based) materials. The MSI for Nike assesses materials with a maximum of 100 points. The higher scores indicate more sustainable materials.
MSI balances scoring based on three categories of points. The three categories include base material score, material environmental attributes, and supplier practices. The base material score takes into account all publicly disclosed LCA studies, industry reports and supplier derived information. The material environmental attributes looks at different dimensions including green chemistry, recycled and organic content, water conservation, and blending or composting. Supplier practices examine the best practices within a specific supply chain. In more detail, it looks at testing performance in Nike’s Restricted Substance List Program, Water Program, and Energy and Carbon Program. Nike MSI gives negative points to supplier practices if a supplier fails to comply with basic environmental standards.
The Nike MSI scoring framework evenly weights four different environmental impact areas. These areas include chemistry, energy and greenhouse gas intensity, water and land use intensity, and physical waste. Nike narrowed the environmental impact areas down to four due to the insufficient publicly available data from other environmental impact areas such as global warming, acidification, and human and eco-toxicity. There are 13 individual indicators within the four impact areas. Chemistry focuses on human health hazard evaluations for carcinogenicity acute toxicity, chronic toxicity, and reproductive toxicity and endocrine disruption. Energy and greenhouse gas intensity (GHG) is mainly concerned with energy intensity and GHG intensity. It includes primary process energy plus transportation. Water and land use intensity includes primary process water (e.g. irrigation for agricultural crops) and amount of bio-based raw material produced per hectare of land. Physical waste focuses on the waste generated from raw material to finished product. The main categories of physical waste include hazardous, municipal solid waste, industrial, recyclable/compostable and mineral.
The four environmental impact areas provide sufficient information for designers that allow them to make informed material choices in the end. It takes multiple finished materials to assemble and create a product. After materials are documented into a bill of materials, their Nike MSI score totals are calculated and added up to produce a total product score.
Is Nike MSI beneficial?
With the focus on materials, Nike MSI has allowed Nike to deliver quality products that offer greater performance and in turn reduce the environmental impact based on the measures in the index. Nike has demonstrated significant improvements in their material measurements since last year. The data for 2013 proves that the scores for footwear have increased by 1.2 points and apparel has increased by 2.1 points. Even suppliers have confirmed 10-15 point improvements, which is significant considering the total point allocation for supplier practices is only 26 points. Nike MSI has maintained a strong evaluation tool that has proven to be useful and advantageous. Nike MSI helps define sustainable product design principles by offering informed and better environmental choices for materials internally.
Nike Materials Sustainability Index (Nike MSI) is a material evaluation tool implemented in early 2011 as a result of eight years of research and development since 2003. Nike developed its own material sustainability index with the ultimate goal of guiding product creation teams to select materials that have low environmental impacts. Considering that materials represent approximately 60% of the environmental impact of Nike’s products, Nike MSI measures relative material scores for each of more than 80,000 materials available from 1400 suppliers.
How does Nike MSI have an impact on the company?
The score of each material is derived from both the Nike apparel and footwear sustainability indexes. Nike MSI has progressively helped product designers and creators make informed, real-time decisions. Their decisions are primarily concerned with the different environmental impacts of materials during the product creation process. Nike MSI is more so a tool for designers to influence their regards to sustainability issues.
Scoring Framework
Nike MSI examines materials from the beginning, the origin of raw materials, to the finished textile or component part. Nike MSI looks at both naturally sourced (plant, animal or mineral based) and synthetic (fossil fuel based) materials. The MSI for Nike assesses materials with a maximum of 100 points. The higher scores indicate more sustainable materials.
MSI balances scoring based on three categories of points. The three categories include base material score, material environmental attributes, and supplier practices. The base material score takes into account all publicly disclosed LCA studies, industry reports and supplier derived information. The material environmental attributes looks at different dimensions including green chemistry, recycled and organic content, water conservation, and blending or composting. Supplier practices examine the best practices within a specific supply chain. In more detail, it looks at testing performance in Nike’s Restricted Substance List Program, Water Program, and Energy and Carbon Program. Nike MSI gives negative points to supplier practices if a supplier fails to comply with basic environmental standards.
The Nike MSI scoring framework evenly weights four different environmental impact areas. These areas include chemistry, energy and greenhouse gas intensity, water and land use intensity, and physical waste. Nike narrowed the environmental impact areas down to four due to the insufficient publicly available data from other environmental impact areas such as global warming, acidification, and human and eco-toxicity. There are 13 individual indicators within the four impact areas. Chemistry focuses on human health hazard evaluations for carcinogenicity acute toxicity, chronic toxicity, and reproductive toxicity and endocrine disruption. Energy and greenhouse gas intensity (GHG) is mainly concerned with energy intensity and GHG intensity. It includes primary process energy plus transportation. Water and land use intensity includes primary process water (e.g. irrigation for agricultural crops) and amount of bio-based raw material produced per hectare of land. Physical waste focuses on the waste generated from raw material to finished product. The main categories of physical waste include hazardous, municipal solid waste, industrial, recyclable/compostable and mineral.
The four environmental impact areas provide sufficient information for designers that allow them to make informed material choices in the end. It takes multiple finished materials to assemble and create a product. After materials are documented into a bill of materials, their Nike MSI score totals are calculated and added up to produce a total product score.
Is Nike MSI beneficial?
With the focus on materials, Nike MSI has allowed Nike to deliver quality products that offer greater performance and in turn reduce the environmental impact based on the measures in the index. Nike has demonstrated significant improvements in their material measurements since last year. The data for 2013 proves that the scores for footwear have increased by 1.2 points and apparel has increased by 2.1 points. Even suppliers have confirmed 10-15 point improvements, which is significant considering the total point allocation for supplier practices is only 26 points. Nike MSI has maintained a strong evaluation tool that has proven to be useful and advantageous. Nike MSI helps define sustainable product design principles by offering informed and better environmental choices for materials internally.
http://youtu.be/poHDtsBKh80
Citation:
Nike, Inc. (2012). Nike Materials Sustainability Index. Retrieved from http://www.apparelcoalition.org/storage/Nike_MSI_2012_0724b.pdf
Nike, Inc. (2012). Nike Materials Sustainability Index. Retrieved from http://www.apparelcoalition.org/storage/Nike_MSI_2012_0724b.pdf