By Suzie Boss
- Published on May 4, 2012 by Stanford Innovation Review
Shoppers in the market for bath and shower products may soon be able to narrow their selection by comparing not just color and price, but also how much plastic various manufacturers use. A cosmetics maker from the United Kingdom is the first business to agree to measure its “plastic footprint,” using tools developed by the Plastic Disclosure Project (PDP).
“If you don’t measure something, you can’t manage it,” explains Doug Woodring, founder of the international project that launched at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative. As a first step toward plastic reduction, PDP encourages companies to calculate their baseline footprint by tallying their use of plastics for manufacturing, packaging, and shipping.