ABSTRACT
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 Standardization’s 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.
