Wanted: An App to Tell Us How Eco-Friendly Our Clothes Are

If you’ve ever wondered what’s better for the planet — silk, wool, or cotton — a new app from Nike called Making can help.

As you can see in the video above, the app lays out the ecological/environmental impact of using various materials. Marketing Week explains that the program:

…ranks the materials used in apparel based on how much water they use and the amount of waste and pollution they give during the manufacturing process. Each material is then further assessed based on whether it uses recycled or organic content.

The app has been developed using insights from the Nike Materials Sustainability Index (MSI) which the company has compiled data from seven years of research.

At the moment, this is really a product for designers, not consumers. And folks working in apparel should be aware of how their choices — from silk to down to leather — have an impact. But it seems fairly obvious that this is just the beginning. What shoppers really need is an app to tell us how eco-friendly items already in stores are. Imagine being able to scan a barcode or a fabric info/care label and having the garment’s production specs — from the factory conditions to the fabric sourcing — appear on your phone? We know we have a fast fashion problem. Could an app be one way to help us solve it?