for integrating environmental , social and economic interests into effective business strategies . Use Sustainability Metrics to Guide Decision - Making I

n recent years, many companies have adopted the concept of sustainable development as a core business value. Although sustainability can be defined in many ways, its underlying premise is that economic well-being is inextricably linked to the health of the environment and the success of the world’s communities and citizens. For those businesses that have recognized the need to embrace sustainable development, the next step is to understand how to implement it. Putting this concept into operation requires identifying practical indicators of sustainability and understanding how they can be measured over time to determine if progress is being made. Sustainability metrics are designed to consolidate key measures of environmental, economic and social performance. The development of metrics that relate environmental and economic performance for production processes is an excellent way for many companies to begin to incorporate the goal of sustainability into management decision-making. Linking the business concept of creating value with environmental performance is termed “eco-efficiency.” A management strategy that incorporates eco-efficiency strives to create more value with less impact. It enables more-efficient production processes and the creation of better products and services, while reducing resource use, waste and pollution along the entire value chain (1). The metrics presented here are designed to meet the following criteria: • simple — not requiring large amounts of time or manpower to develop • useful to management decision-making and relevant to business • understandable to a variety of audiences, from people in operations to finance to strategic planning • cost-effective in terms of data collection • reproducible — incorporating decision rules that produce consistent and comparable results • robust and non-perverse — indicating progress toward sustainability when improvement has in fact been made • stackable along the supply chain so they are useable beyond the particular fenceline for which the calculation was performed • protective of proprietary information — preventing the back-calculation of confidential information.