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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand whether the adoption of environmental management practices and firm characteristics influence the environmental benchmarking in Indian firms. It further looks into the impact of environmental benchmarking practices on firms’ environmental performance. Design/methodology/approach – The study conducts a research survey to obtain the practitioner’s responses on the different aspects of environmental benchmarking. The survey data of 104 firms provide an empirical basis to investigate different research hypotheses using statistical techniques. Findings – The results indicate that the firms which implement environmental management practices are more likely to adopt environmental benchmarking in one or more areas of their operations. The findings signify that firms which benchmarks for environmental purposes are more likely to have better environmental performance. The study confirms that large firms have significant chances of having environmental benchmarking compared to small and medium sized firms. The firms in different sectors have different relative preference to eight different areas of environmental benchmarking. However, all these preferences are not significant at 95 per cent confidence level. Research limitations/implications – The research use only qualitative responses on environment management aspects and could be further extended by incorporating the quantitative (emission) data of different industries. Practical implications – The study provides an insight into the environmental benchmarking practices of Indian firms for better management of environmental performance of the firms. Originality/value – The study investigates the experience and attitude of Indian firms to environmental benchmarking based on an empirical research. It adds to the knowledge in the field of environmental benchmarking in developing countries with specific focus on India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]