Related expressions

Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Inventory, Key Performance Indicator.

Explanation

The environmental performance of an organisation is the measurable results related to the organisations control of its interaction with the environment. Typical measures (life cycle inventory data) are resource use, energy use, emissions and waste production. The organisation's environmental policy, its objectives and targets are the basis for what measures to include in the environmental management. The environmental load of these these kinds of inventory data can be recalculated to contribution to different impact categories (climate change, acisidification etc) via characterisation factors.
Aggregation of individual actors' environmental performance results in a collective environmental performance of the entire supply chain.

Environmental performance of a process/product can also be quantified in a wider perspective, using the standardised techniques of Life Cycle Assessment defined in ISO 14040 and ISO 14044.

Application/usage in Indisputable KEY

In Indisputable KEY, the environmental performance of the wood supply chain and its entities will be quantified and evaluated using a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPI). The KPIs includes both economical as environmental aspects. The KPIs that are categorised as additive can be used to assess the performance of the studied value chain. This will ensure that the improvements realised for the wood supply chains through the Indisputable KEY project are not only improvements in efficiency of manufacturing and logistics, but also environmental improvements. To develop the environmental performance measurements for a supply chain is in itself a challenging objective for Indisputable KEY.

There exists a set of fairly well-developed indicators for environmental performance derived from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which measure the potential effect of common physical impact categories. Some examples of indicators that can be used to measure environmental performance are given in Table 1.

Table 1 : Potential indicators of environmental performance to be reported from all parts of the value chain.

There are considerable challenges in Indisputable KEY to establish KPIs that can be used to reliably measure environmental performance. The challenge is partly due to the large differences in production processes, but also to access to accurate data for the estimation procedures.

Institutions with teaching capabilities

• E-learning: EuroMotor-AutoTrain proposes different courses about environment management:
• Morpheus Environmental Training (UK) is a company dedicated to environmental training for businesses wishing to improve their environmental profil. In particular, Morpheus is aimed at those businesses seeking to achieve the international environmental management standard; ‘ISO 14001’
• See also: the role of training in environmental performances of firms .

Indisputable Key pedagogical material
Training Module D1
D3.3 Report on selection and definition of environmental and economic KPIs
D3.8 Environmental Product Declarations for selected products
D3.11b Environmental and economic impact of implementation of developed approach and on further possibilities and challenges in wood chain traceability
These documents are available in the download area.

Available text books and training material

“Environmental performance in OECD countries progress in the 1990s”, OECD, 1996: the OECD Environmental Performance Review Programme conducts peer reviews of environmental conditions and progress in each OECD country, and scrutinises efforts to meet both domestic objectives and international commitments. Evaluating progress in reducing the pollution burden, improving natural resource management, integrating environmental and economic policies, and strengthening international co-operation are also central to these reviews. These analyses are supported by a broad range of economic and environmental data and indicators. Environmental performance reviews of Germany, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands, Austria, Canada and the United States have already been published.

“ Environmental performance reviews – achievements in OECD countries ”, OECD, 2001