Industrial Environmental Performance Metrics Challenges and Opportunities (1999) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
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As industry has begun to develop environmental goals that move beyond compliance, new methods of measuring and tracking improvement have been required (Ditz and Ranganathan, 1997; White and Zinkl, 1996~. To investigate the potential for advancement in the area of industrial environmental performance metrics, the National Academy of Engineering, at the request of the U.S.
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OBSERVATIONS, TRENDS, AND CHALLENGES Environmental metrics are at the heart of how industry and its many stakeholders define environmental performance and determine whether progress is being made. This report documents how the use of environmental metrics has
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TABLE E-1 Environmental Metrics Used in the Four Industry Sectors Metric Automotive Chemical Electronics Pulp and Paper Supply Chain E E Facility Centered Pollutant releases C C C C Greenhouse gas emissions C C C Material use C C E C Percent recycled material C C E C Energy use C C C C Water use C C C C Packaging C C C C Percent of land preserved E C Environmental incidence report C C C C Lost workdays/injuries C C C C Product Centered Nongreenhouse gas emissions C Greenhouse gas emissions C Material use Energy use C C Sustainability Sustainable forestry E NOTE: C = environmental metric in current use; E = emerging environmental metric.
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With new knowledge and changing public expectations, fresh environmental challenges are arising that are not addressed by contemporary environmental metrics. Some firms are developing new metrics, creating tools to prioritize these indicators, and experimenting with more qualitative issues of human health and ecosystem impacts (Strang and Sage, forthcoming; Wright et al., 1998~.
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Finally, it should be noted that industrial environmental metrics are now beginning to expand beyond manufacturing to the service sector, including such disparate industries as retail sales, distribution services, airlines, energy services, and health care (Chertow and Esty, 1997; Environmental Law Institute, 1998; Graedel, 1997~. Presently, the lack of service-sector metrics makes it difficult even to begin to quantify the impacts of these businesses or their potential for environmental improvement.
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. A FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION Over the past several decades, public concerns about risks to human and ecosystem health have driven individuals and organizations to act in a more environmentally conscious manner (Council on Environmental Quality, 1995; United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1992, 1996~.
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Therefore, some guidance should be provided to those organizations that have yet to establish a comprehensive framework of environmental metrics. RECOMMENDATION 1: Companies should investigate and implement to the greatest degree practicable environmental metrics representative of current best practices.
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NOTE: In many cases the usefulness of metrics will be enhanced by appropriate normalization (e.g., per unit product, per unit sales, per product use, per product lifetime)
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However, the widespread implementation of these metrics will be a significant and meaningful first step. GOALS FOR IMPROVING INDUSTRIAL ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE To assist industry efforts to improve environmental performance, the committee has identified five goals for enhancing the development and use of industrial environmental performance metrics.
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This process should begin by focusing on human health risks and extend to issues of ecosystem health and long-term sustainability as knowledge and understanding of environmental systems evolve. Present knowledge may not allow for explicit numeric scoring of all impacts under all circumstances, but the committee feels that sufficient knowledge does exist to begin to prioritize categories of environmental loads (e.g., air emissions, water emissions, resource use, land use)
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Developing a set of standard metrics is absolutely critical to establishing a pattern of continual improvement in industrial environmental stewardship. While government participation is prudent in any process that seeks to set national standards, industry should play an integral role in the development, implementation, and promotion of standardized environmental performance metrics.
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Although establishing international industrial environmental performance standards will not be easy, efforts should be made to bring global attention to this issue. Goal 4: Expand the Development and Use of Metrics The time is right to expand the use of environmental performance metrics over more of the product life cycle and to disseminate knowledge of best practices to a wider audience.
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Some system needs to be devised that more effectively communicates these techniques to small and medium-sized companies, as well as to larger companies that have yet to develop environmental measures. The Internet allows for the creation of a widely accessible clearinghouse of environmental metrics information.
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This may involve investigating the implications of long-term industrial activity on the environment, including such issues as materials flows and energy use. While the concept of sustainable development has widespread appeal, there is as yet no scientific consensus on a definition of the concept or indices by which it may be measured at the macro, or societal, level.
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Much work remains, but as society moves to achieve sustainable development, environmental metrics will provide a valuable tool for influencing decision making and driving innovation. REFERENCES Brown, M
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Paper presented at the NAE Workshop on Industrial Environmental Performance Metrics, January 28-29, 1998, Washington, D.C.
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