With talk about environmental sustainability, global warming, carbon footprints and greenhouse gas emissions, a desire to measure them through indices or metrics has grown. If you Google "environmental sustainability index," you will get over 472,000 Web pages!

There is the Environmental Sustainability Index of 2005 published by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, which ranked the United States 45 out 146 – behind Congo and Botswana. Finland was ranked No. 1 while North Korea was dead last. The same group also issued the 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) which ranked the United States at 39 out of 149 – behind Albania and Uruguay. This time Switzerland was ranked first and last place went to Niger. It is rather curious that the Yale Center stated emphatically in its executive summary that "the EPI's real value lies not in the numerical rankings but rather in careful analysis of the underlying data and performance metrics." If that's true, why publish the numerical rankings at all?

The EPI does have some intrinsic value in that it looks at two most fundamental aspects, namely, environmental health (impact on humans) and ecosystem vitality (impact on ecosystem and climate change).

The term "aspects" leads us directly to ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems. One of the key elements of ISO 14001 is the requirement to identify all the "significant environmental aspects" of an organization's operation.

The environmental aspects of a company's operation can be used as practical indices or metrics for its environmental sustainability. To identify the environmental aspects, look at all the activities throughout the entire operation that could affect the environment, positively and negatively. Focus on four areas: material usages, energy consumption, water usages and pollutant releases.

For material usages, look at how much raw material is purchased to make the products and how much of it actually ends up in products that are shipped. If a lot ends up as scrap or waste byproducts, there is a negative environmental aspect in that part of the operation. If waste byproducts are recycled, that would be a positive environmental aspect.

On energy consumption, track the kilowatt-hour usages and natural gas consumption, in terms of unit consumption per unit of goods produced. On water usages, focus on conservation: how much water is consumed per unit of production? How much wastewater is generated?

Pollutant releases include wastewater discharges, hazardous waste generation and air emissions. This is by far the easiest metric to track since most are regulated through environmental laws. Performance can be easily monitored through the wastewater treatment plant permits, air permits and hazardous wastes manifests. Each July 1, the government requires most industries to provide a full accounting of its emissions to the environment during the previous year by filing a Form R. The Toxic Release Inventory is then constructed, which is one metric that forces industry to reconcile its releases.

Quantifying environmental aspects

Many companies use a matrix that looks at the environmental impact from the standpoint of severity and frequency. A numerical value of "5" is assigned if its environmental severity impact is severe. If that activity occurs all the time, you also assign it a value of 5 for frequency. The overall environmental risk would be 25 (the product of severity and frequency). After all activities are assessed, a table or chart can be developed to demonstrate areas that need attention.

The best way to do this is to involve the line supervisors and have them go through the process of identifying these environmental aspects. Ownership is the key to success; the more people involved in the process, the more ownership the employees will have and the better the results. PE