Indicators of sustainable production

Over the past 10 years, firms, government and the public have increasingly focused on measurement tools to assess the environmental aspects of sustainability. While there are numerous lists of environmental performance indicators (see, for example, International Organizations for Standardizationʹs ISO 14301, Global Reporting Initiative, and World Business Council for Sustainable Development), these lists provide little insight into how firms might revise the indicators they currently have to more accurately measure sustainability. The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts Lowell has developed a tool to enable companies to evaluate the effectiveness of sustainability indicator systems. The tool includes a framework that consists of five levels for categorizing existing indicators relative to the basic principles of sustainability. The purpose of the framework is not to rank indicators as better or worse, but rather to provide a method to evaluate the ability of a set of indicators to inform decision-making and measure progress toward more sustainable systems of production. In its current state, the framework focuses on environmental, health and safety aspects of production. Work is underway to expand it to include social and economic aspects.