Methodologies for Measuring Sustainability

Koen Boone, Managing Director Europe, The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) was considering how LCA methods could be linked with other measurements to get a handle on the social impact of products.  There were 3 main components:

•          The category dossier: a collection of evidence on the supply chain, to identify environmental and social hotspots and opportunities for improvement.
•          The category sustainability profile: a “Synthesis of product sustainability knowledge and improvement opportunities”(?)
•          Key Performance Indicators: Measuring and tracking product category sustainability.

    Rather than use a manual process involving multiple questionnaires between TSC, retailers and their suppliers, TSC has created a Pilot Reporting Platform to which it uploads the questions allowing both retailers and manufacturers to make single responses directly.  Only the most important issues need to be measured and this amounts to 10-20 KPIs per product.

Cotton has already been completed.  Disposables are due to be done by the end of October 2012, and fibres by Feb 2013.

What’s different about TSC?  It’s global, covers all sustainability issues for all consumer products, is academic, mainstream, concentrates on issues that matter, and is linked to businesses with  a combined turnover of $1.5 trillion.  And to get involved, Tier 1 membership will only cost you $100,000/year.