Environmental management systems for internal corporate environmental benchmarking

Abstract

Corporate environmental benchmarking is difficult with the range and inconsistency of environmental information available, even from facilities within the same firm. Environmental management systems can assist firms in organizing internal corporate benchmarking efforts. They attempt to capture environmental impacts from activities throughout a facility under a single system and generally follow traditional benchmarking cycles of plan, do, check, and act. However, the systems lack important features that enable benchmarking. Based on a critical analysis of environmental management systems, the article recommends minor changes to extend environmental management systems for corporate environmental benchmarking. Consistent goals should be encouraged at all facilities to produce common metrics. Procedures should require data collection and reporting to a central office. Management review should monitor performance and determine where leading facilities can transfer better processes to lagging facilities.

Five Elements for Organizational Decision-Making with an Environmental Management System

“…Ambitious corporate goals and targets should be set to get the people closest to the problems working on solutions. Goals can focus the EMS to be used as a benchmarking tool (42). As the targets are defined, the goals provide a picture of the potential future limitations an organization may have on producing wastes and guide decisions to meet these levels.…”

Sustainability: Environmental management, transparency and competitive advantage

“…As discussed by Matthews (2003) , organisations in developing their overall Corporate Social Responsibility policies have identifi ed Environmental Management Systems such as ISO 14001, as a means of addressing changing environmental issues. Organisations recognise that merely complying with regulatory requirements is no longer acceptable in terms of competitiveness, and now aspire to pollution prevention and monitoring of their operations to prove their credentials as good corporate citizens.…”

“…The level of improvement in environmental performance, however, is set by the individual organisation ( Matthews, 2003) . The standard is focussed upon internal environmental issues, which does not require the view of local community activities or global actions to be taken into account for most cases.…”

Problems of benchmarking greenhouse gas emissions in dairy agriculture

“…In environmental terms, benchmarking is a tool used to drive performance forwards through a process of "gap analysis", in which a business compares its environmental performance with similar businesses in the same sector (Matthews, 2003;Jónsdóttir et al, 2005), and subsequently implements a programme of actions intended to bridge the gap between them (Jónsdóttir et al, 2005). The scope for doing this has increased considerably in recent years, as the availability of data against which to benchmark has improved (Matthews, 2003), some of which is in the public domain (e.g.…”

“…The scope for doing this has increased considerably in recent years, as the availability of data against which to benchmark has improved (Matthews, 2003), some of which is in the public domain (e.g. EBLEX, 2014;CO2Benchmark[1]), whilst other data may only be available through securely maintained databases built up through the benchmarking activities of a number of businesses (e.g.…”