There's a cleanup sweeping its way around the world. Global efforts have been made across borders, industries, and brands to reduce our negative impact on the planet.

Brands have multiple layers of impact, and the quest for sustainability requires action on every level. For example, a brand manufacturer’s own product sustainability might focus on:

• Its environmental footprint
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Material selections
• Use of resources
• Supply chain sustainability

Why has product sustainability become a bigger focus recently? The forces behind it come from many sources. Some pull, some push. Shifting customer preferences tell brands what to do (the “pull”), and pressure from investors and product sustainability requirements tell brands how to do it (the “push”).

Can brands essentially jump and duck at the same time to meet demand and regulation? Meeting product sustainability requirements and resonating with consumers requires new processes plus the tools to track them. This "bullseye" of sustainability impacts every department, from product development to the warehouse.

The system that next-gen brands use to pool must-know product sustainability data is the same that many use for their digital catalog data: the next-gen product information management (PIM) software. Keep reading to learn exactly how the PIM supports product sustainability requirements.

What does product sustainability encompass?

Product sustainability refers to a product's production or consumption resulting in minimal or zero harm. That potential harm includes the use of nonrenewable resources, any practice that harms the environment, or products or practices that cause harm to society.

No action is truly free of harm, so most product sustainability requirements focus on minimizing negative impact. Sometimes, that means offsetting the most inevitable harm with other actions that benefit the environment.

How a PIM Supports Product Sustainability Requirements

A product information management (PIM) software is first thought of as a marketing tool. That’s what it was originally designed for 20 years ago. Brand manufacturers can easily organize product details in a legacy PIM, including product listing titles and descriptions. In newer PIMs, brands can even store, sort, and link product images and videos to the rest of each product’s data.

When the next-gen PIM software was developed, it made managing versions of product data (for different sellers, channels, or endpoints) a consistent and error-free experience. That’s not all it added to its quiver, though.

The greatest ROI of next-gen PIM for manufacturers is in its internal process support.

Brands today save money and streamline processes from product development to logistics using the next-gen PIM. Collaboration between departments is unlocked for more strategic sales, marketing, web development, and overall leadership.

Internal processes and the teams that build them are all better off with the collaboration, data centralization, and data fidelity provided in the PIM.

These are the 5 ways the next-gen PIM specifically supports product sustainability.

1.Track Raw Material Sources

A brand’s choice of raw materials to use in product design is a crucial element of product sustainability. Products that require nonrenewable resources are not sustainable. Product design that favors materials that are harmful to the environment (when there are less harmful alternatives) also isn't sustainable.

When product development is underway, product sustainability requirements are top-of-mind. In the next-gen PIM, product development teams can track raw material sources with custom fields (or "attributes") inside the software.

A PIM is not just to store product descriptions and photos. Internal-facing information can also be entered for every product, including raw material types used in product design. Including this information is beneficial for the marketing team down the line, because more compelling and complete marketing collateral can be made based on raw material details.

2.Track the Impact of Your Manufacturing Process

The manufacturing process involves a long list of environmental and social factors impacting product sustainability. The power sources used, the materials (and especially water) used, and the labor standards met in production are the largest areas of impact.

Brand manufacturers can enter every one of these details in their PIM to track the sustainability of each product. Custom attributes to track the impact of that product’s manufacturing process can be added right into the catalog data. Then, individual products or whole product families can be sorted based on their overall impact.

Just imagine the marketing team with easy-to-access information including "the most sustainable product family" or "our number-one product with zero-impact manufacturing."

Tracking the impact of manufacturing plus the raw materials used for products right inside the PIM also gives you an easy way to export data for product sustainability requirements. Reporting can be done with dynamic or static product lists that are easily exported to spreadsheets. You can even build custom templates right into the PIM.

3.Symbols of Recyclability

Once products are designed and made, they have to be packaged. One of the most important elements of product sustainability requirements is transparency for the consumer and for organizing bodies. This is done when you apply symbols of recyclability on products and product packaging.

Symbols of sustainability and recyclability tell the market how each product was made and what its impact is. The most common symbols indicate:

• Your product was made from recycled materials
• Your product is 100% biodegradable
• Your product was made using renewable resources
• Your product was manufactured using ethical labor standards

Some sustainability symbols also mark a product’s approval from certain organizations like the EPA.

Managing symbols of product sustainability is done easily in the next-gen PIM. Each product can be linked to the image files of the symbols it should carry. This is a smart use of the digital asset storage that many next-gen PIM users don’t think of.

It was a big deal when digital assets no longer had to be stored externally from the rest of the product data. Now, include your symbols of sustainability in the PIM, and multiple departments will benefit.

4.Improve Your Supply Chain

Once a product is packaged and sold, the supply chain moves that product to the end consumer. The environmental impact of the supply chain is a vital part of the product's overall lifecycle impact.

Brand manufacturers control their impact throughout the delivery process. Shipping items in bulk to local storage facilities where products are dispatched to final buyers is one way that brands can lower their impact. To move goods this way, internal operators inside the brand need to know what the expected demand for each product is, how long it takes to manufacture, and other details that tell a brand what to move where.

The details of a product's manufacturing lead time, historical and projected sale history can be built right into the next-gen PIM. These can become new attributes in the product catalog so a brand can bridge the gap between sales, marketing, and logistics departments.

Once this data is added for every product, then marketing teams can make decisions on offers based on product supply and lead time. Sales departments can also feed better information to logistics to move products in anticipation of need. And logistics departments can count on a whole-team collaboration instead of running after each new order and filling shipments in the most urgent, stressful, and non-sustainable way.

5.Create Sustainability Reporting Standards

One of the most momentous features of the next-gen PIM is its built-in product data quality scoring. A brand decides what its requirements are, like product data completeness, accuracy, and even certain sustainability requirements being met.

Once a brand manufacturer customizes its product data quality scoring this way, products can be instantly sorted, filtered, and edited based on their product sustainability requirements being met (or not). Any number of product sustainability requirements can be measured this way, including those related to:

• The EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD, update to the Non-Financial Reporting Directive or NFRD)
• The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
• The IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards
• The CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project)
• The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
• The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)
• And the B Corp framework

Using the next-gen PIM to support product sustainability requirements is a question of putting the right data in the right place. In the PIM, this data is organized, sortable, scored, and accessible throughout the product life cycle. This captures product sustainability data from each department as the product is developed, manufactured, packaged, marketed, sold, and shipped. This also makes every subsequent person's job easier along the way.

The end result of using the next-gen PIM to support product sustainability is greater transparency and accuracy for the consumer and for each governing body requiring this data. A brand is finally able to "jump" and "duck" at the same time and funnel complete, accurate, and compliant information to the right people at the right time.

The transition to a more sustainable world of brand manufacturers has just begun. Gain the flexibility you need now to help grow sustainability efforts as new technologies, materials, and requirements are introduced. Learn more about the next-gen PIM today.