Good Bye Indicators?
October 12, 2010
Many environmental management systems, for example the WWF GreenOffice, use indicators for companies to track their environmental performance. While a good idea, indicators have their limits – after a year or three most companies will have reached a satisfactorily level and can not, with reasonable measures, decrease the level of e.g. paper consumption or waste further. Also keeping track of the indicators is a tedious job, and not very interesting or challenging for the person responsible for it.
Furthermore, what to do when a satisfactorily level in an indicator is reached? Changing to a new indicator would probably be the answer of the organization controlling the standards, but I doubt that this is a good long-term solution. It brings the same problems with it – goal reached after two to three years, not interesting & tedious.
A final critique of indicators is that one often has many different ones to keep track off, at the same – waste, energy, paper, water, transportation, for example. This diliutes the attention and spreads resources over many different areas. It is not a problem for a multinational company with a whole environmental experts team, but for a SME – where often one person handles environmental matters – this can mean spreading resources very thin, or even failure.
So what would be better than a set of indicators for companies to track in order to improve their environmental performance? In my opinion, it would be smart to have yearly projects, which the company would pursue.
Yearly projects have the advantage that all resources – human and monetary – are invested into one effort, for example reducing energy usage. Instead of working for a couple of years on something, decreasing energy & water usage, waste, transportation and paper little by little every year, a company can concentrate on one project and reach the goal at the end of the year; then allowing them to concentrate on a new project the next year. The monetary savings through a yearly project also are likely higher than in an multiple indicator approach, because results are higher and result in a higher pay-off.
Companies having the same standard – e.g. EMAS easy or ISO 14.001 – also could come together to form working groups, exchanging ideas and creating the best solution to their common problem. This also fosters cooperation, networking and learning among companies from different areas – the companies search for a solution to a common problem, even if they do business in different markets. With indicators, while often being similar in different companies, one company might more concentrate on X while the other one concentrates on Y. With a common project, everyone concentrates on Z and can share their experiences with others.
This is at the moment still futuristic thinking, of course. Most EMS still follow their indicator-driven approach at company-wide environmental improvement, and while it works, I strongly believe that a project driven approach has many advantages as outlined above.
If you and your company feel tired of indicators and would like to realize concrete results to improve your environmental performance, please get in touch with me.
