[Editor's Note: For GreenBiz.com news coverage of the Eco Index, see Jonathan Bardelline's article "Levi's, Outdoor Industry Join Forces for Product Footprint Tool."]

Outdoor Industry Association's Eco Index is prime time for piloting, meaning the Beta Version is now available on the new Eco Index site here for industries to internally assess environmental aspects along their supply chain. Even though recent reports from media outlets like Fast Company and The Wall Street Journal have intimated that this is a consumer-facing label, Eco Working Group members like Jill Dumain, Director of Environmental Strategy at Patagonia and Chair of the Eco Working Group Advisory Council, affirm that this is an "internal supply chain facing tool to assess the environmental impacts of individual products."

"This session was the kick-off to the pilot program," says Beth Jensen, Corporate Responsibility Manager of OIA. "It gave the 100 or so attendees who have been a part of the Eco Working Group a detailed overview of the tool and real-life examples of how to use the index for a number of different products."

The Eco Index is divided up into three different "levels" including Guidelines, Indicators and Metrics to assess the impacts within six product lifecycle stages, which include, Materials, Packaging, Product Manufacturing and Assembly, Transport and Distribution, Use of Service, and End of Life. Testing products through the Eco Index during this Beta period and providing feedback will be essential to the evolution of the Index. The Group wants to ensure that this tool is useful for any company of any size and for any product -- whether it be a hard good, like a camping stove; a soft good, like a jacket; and other "hybrid" products, like footwear.

Sample items run through the Index were presented by Jamie Bainbridge, Materials Research Director at NAU, who tried two hard shell jackets at the Indicator level; Peter Girard, formerly on the Timberland Environmental Stewardship team and now Senior Consultant at PE International, focused on a footwear product at the Metrics level; Steve Grind, Product Manager at Cascade Designs focused on a camping stove on the Indicators level; and Joe McSwiney, President of Cascade Designs highlighted the Facilities Indicators.

McSwiney joked that the Index looked arduous but was relatively simple to use. The Index essentially provides a series of questions about a product and a point system attributed to that question. If you don't know an answer to a question, you most often will check the "0" point box or the "negative" point box and then you move on. This comparative scoring system at Indicator level provides a standardized level achievement and the data capture tool at Metric level provides a means to collect quantitative data.

"You basically keep reading until you're stuck and that's your score," McSwiney laughed. "What you learn from that, however, is very useful," he continued. "The missed scores are in fact the most useful scores. I basically came away saying, 'Wow, look at all the things that we can do to improve.' It really gives you a great framework to work within."