Target using scoring system to look at product sustainability

Emboldened by consumers demanding safer, sustainable products, Target Corp. has created environmental benchmarks for thousands of popular items — from baby lotion to dish detergent.

The Minneapolis-based retail giant says it's part of a broader plan to help consumers make smarter buying decisions.

Last month, Target began collecting information from vendors supplying about 7,500 products in the household cleaning, personal care, beauty and baby-care categories. Each product will be ranked on a 100-point scale based on the sustainability of its ingredients, label transparency and overall environmental impact. The higher the score, the better.

The rankings, which took more than two years to develop, will help Target decide what products to stock and where to place them. Eventually, consumers may have access to the rankings.

"Today, there is no consensus on what a more-sustainable product is, especially within these categories," said Kate Heiny, Target's senior group manager of sustainability. "Developing a product standard is the first step toward expanding the selection of sustainable product choices, and not just a subset of products that are called 'natural.' "

This is also a business decision for Target and could help its bottom line. Efforts like this are gaining traction largely because "conscious consumption" is going mainstream, according to Rob Rankin, vice president and director of brand development for Clarity Coverdale Fury, a Minneapolis-based marketing agency.

"The topic of health and sustainability has hit the tipping point; it has critical mass," Rankin said. "It's moved beyond the tree-huggers and Shirley MacLaine of the '70s."

"Target is a very customer-focused company, so it's a great sign that they're hearing from their customers — mainstream American consumers — that they want safer, healthier and more-sustainable products," said Dara O'Rourke, GoodGuide's co-founder and chief sustainability officer.

Target isn't the only retailer mixing it up in the sustainability game.

Last year, rival Wal-Mart rolled out its own sustainability index, which tracks the environmental impact of certain products. Wal-Mart claims the information helps its buyers evaluate suppliers' goods, and targets select potentially harmful chemicals that will ultimately be reduced or eliminated from its product mix.

As of mid-September, Wal-Mart's index was applied across 200 product categories, affecting more than 1,000 suppliers. By year-end, the retailer said it will expand the index to 300 product categories, and as many as 5,000 suppliers.

"We've reached an acceleration point where we are moving from measurement to results," Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke said last month.

Rankin calls this muscular 70th percentile the "movable middle … they're looking for a way to take action. But they struggle, it's hard. They don't know what to buy. They ask themselves, 'Is this really healthy?' So if a retailer can facilitate change and help them out, the [retailer] stands to win."

The consumer wins, Rankin said, because now "they don't have to comb through every nook and cranny of Target to do better. Target will do it for them."

But a 2012 report by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics indicates mainstream retailers have a ways to go in pressuring the $60 billion personal-care product industry to improve.

The San Francisco-based advocacy group ranks Whole Foods, the natural and organic grocery-store chain, as the industry leader, with Target "showing potential." (Target says it will include cosmetics in its sustainable product standards next year.)

Personal-care products are "largely unregulated" by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, making retailers de facto regulators, the report says.

One group that has lobbied Target to adopt a safe cosmetics policy is the virtual organization MomsRising.org.

"Moms not only have tremendous power in the voting booth, but also in terms of consumer power," said Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director of the group, which has more than 1 million members. "Women make three-quarters of purchasing decisions."

MomsRising circulated a petition last month urging Target to forbid toxic chemicals in the cosmetics it sells and to increase transparency on product labels. In an interview last week, Rowe-Finkbeiner applauded Target's new sustainability standards and efforts at label transparency.

"We hear from moms all the time that they shouldn't have to have a chemistry degree to buy personal care products. These products should be proven to be safe before they reach the shelves," she said. "We're tired of playing Whac-A-Mole with product recalls and constantly looking on the Internet to find the latest products that are unsafe.

"Manufacturers, retailers and legislators need to step up," she said.