I just saw a mention in OnEarth, a magazine produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council about a open-source database under construction now that will let shoppers find the products that are the most environmental based on their entire lifecycle -- including the materials used, transportation required, disposability, etc.

It's called Earthster, and it's being put together by Gregory Norris, a Harvard lecturer who co-wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times recently about the importance of looking at the whole lifecycle of a product for its environmental and social implications. That is, the importance to consumers, who want to know if one green product is more green than another, and to the manufacturers themselves, who can learn about money-saving and customer-enticing processes.

In the times article, he talks about the stainless steel bottle, which is much more harmful to produce than the plastic bottle because of the fossil fuels, emissions, metals, toxic risks, etc. Only if you use it 50 times then the climate impacts are much better than a plastic bottle used once.

No sure when the database will be up and running, but the NRDC says Walmart is a big funder and will be among the first retailers to roll out the system. So, stay tuned. The labelling may get really specific and really useful.