Due to global demands for environmentally sustainable development in supply chains and the interdependent connections in the product design process, the use of appropriate sustainability metrics is an important aspect to the success and ecological responsibility of a company or its products. In previous research, 55 sustainability metrics have been identified from literature reviews and surveyed for their usefulness and practicality (utility). Although these metrics were initially grouped into six environmental areas, the initial groups are less meaningful for a comprehensive analysis as they do not provide a statistically distinguished characteristic for each group. In this research, an exploratory factor analysis employing the survey results more appropriately defines sustainability metric categories to best reflect utility. The factor analysis effectively suggests new categories for the sustainability metrics by considering underlying relationships represented by correlations among those metrics. In this way, it is posited that the new metric organization will provide a more practical set for future use, which can be further applied to indicate product life-cycle sustainability.