Sneakers-Maker Puma Tracks Its Carbon Footprint How big is a sneaker's carbon footprint? In a quest to find out, sportswear giant Puma's chairman, Jochem Zeitz, helped develop the Environmental Profit & Loss Account, or EP&L, a balance sheet that assigns a dollar figure to the environmental costs inflicted at every step of the manufacturing process that transforms rubber, cotton, leather and other materials into the brand's iconic soccer shoes, track suits and jerseys. While Puma hasn't been able to break out the environmental cost of manufacturing a pair of shoes or other individual products, the label in 2010 put the estimated cost of its overall environmental impact at 145 million euros ($185 million). Puma distributes its products in more than 120 countries, employs more than 11,000 people worldwide and had more than 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) in consolidated sales last year, more than half of that for footwear, according to the company's website. "I realized that valuing natural capital and nature was something that had gained traction and was something that scientists were starting to come up with methodologies for ... and I thought 'why not apply that to a business context,'" Zeitz said on the sidelines on the United Nations' earth summit in Rio de Janeiro. I was surprised that no one had done it before. FILE - In this April 10, 2007 file photo, Puma sports shoes are displayed for sale in front of the company sign at a store in Munich, southern Germany. How big is your sneaker's carbon footprint? Proponents hope that assigning monetary values to resources will help put the brakes on unfettered development. (AP Photo/Christof Stache, File) Close Zeitz didn't rule out the future possibility of being able to include on a product tag the monetary value of the environmental destruction inflicted by the making of a pair of sneakers. "I think consumers are beginning to get interested in this kind of thing," he said. Long relegated to the fringes, initiatives to put dollar figures on the life-sustaining functions of ecosystems have gained currency in recent years, and such "green accounting" programs were very much in vogue at the U.N.'s Rio+20 conference on sustainable development that wrapped up on Friday. They say such initiatives could help make governments and corporations less likely to jeopardize the natural assets and environmental systems that make the planet habitable, which could help stave off the kind of wholesale environmental meltdown many scientists are predicting. Case in point: a recent study that PricewaterhouseCooper did for the government of Malaysia, which was considering razing a mangrove forest to build a tourist resort. Taking into account the crucial role mangrove forests play in protecting coastlines from devastating storms and tidal waves, plus their status as incubators for a plethora of aquatic life, the team estimated the forest's value to society at $30 million a year. The hotel was not built, said Malcolm Preston, who led the PricewaterhouseCooper team. In the case of Puma, the sportswear manufacturer paired with PricewaterhouseCooper to assign a monetary value to each aspect of Puma's environmental degradation, from its land and water use to its pollution and waste generation, as well as its creation of greenhouse gases.