Every decision a designer makes in the product creation process has an impact on the environment. Nike estimates that materials make up about 60% of the lifecycle environmental impact of a pair of trainers, whereas the manufacturing process accounts for about 25% and the remainder is split between transport, retail, office facilities, packaging, use and disposal. 

After having pushed sustainability within its own product lines for years, by introducing waste-reducing technologies like Flyknit and working towards a "closed-loop" business model in which all of its offerings are made with 100 percent recyclable materials, this app represents a slightly different approach to solving the problem. While many environmentally oriented efforts end up concerning production and manufacturing, MAKING goes back upstream to really try to instil a concern for sustainability directly in the next generation of designers.

By targeting and monitoring its approach to land, energy and chemical use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste water discharge and solid waste, Nike aims to drive down the impact its products have before the product goes into manufacturing, while empowering the industry to value materials in a different way. 

The app is publicly available with the goal of helping to lead industry sustainability efforts and provide designers and product creators with guidance in selecting materials with lower environmental impacts.

Nike hopes that Making will prompt designers to dive deeper into the MSI on the web, and to think about how that data, which is available with an open source license, might be mixed, mashed-up or put to use in other ways.

The MSI that underpins the Making app has been gifted by Nike to the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which represents about 30% of global apparel and footwear sales. It will develop and share data with its members in order to develop greater traceability and transparency across the industry.

(Photo by Coolhunting Project on Flickr)