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This chapter introduces the Composite Sustainability Indices (CSI) as a robust tool for process designers to scrutinize sustainable chemical processes at the conceptual design stage without compromising the process economy. The CSI methodology has been primarily constructed on three metrics; Environment (Waste Reduction Algorithm), Energy (Energy Impacts Index), and Safety (Risk Assessment Index). The next step is combining and ranking of the above metrics, as their units are not the same, followed by applying the Analytical Hierarchy Process, an existing knowledge-based and multiobjective decision-making methodology. The result will be aggregated into a Key Process Indicator ranging from 0 to 100, which denotes a measure of the sustainability of chemical processes. Meanwhile, the economic and profitability analyses of all proposed design arrays will be performed. Ultimately, Sustainability–Profit analysis will be accomplished to ascertain the most sustainable process design. The CSI is widely applicable to fossil fuel, biofuel, refinery, gas processing, petrochemical, and mining processing industries.

This study aims to establish the link of key Islamic banking sustainability indicators with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) as a policy recommendation for sustainable development and to mitigate the distressing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit). To identify the key Islamic banking sustainability indicators, the authors selected the most cited sustainability measurement indexes in Islamic banking. Initially, the indexes were divided into 10 broader themes, and then the key Islamic banking sustainability indicators were shortlisted from each theme based on their high-frequency distribution. The shortlisted sustainability indicators were then ratified to be in line with Islamic philosophy based on “Maqasid al-Shariah” (objectives of Shariah) and were subsequently grouped into the three dimensions of economic, environmental, and social sustainability based on the axial coding method. Finally, the categorized sustainability indicators were aligned with the relevant UN SDGs through the axial coding method for policy formulation, and respectively 12 propositions were developed for policy formulation. This study labeled the methodological process of this study as the ECA method (exploration, categorization, alignment). The new ECA method offers a reverse extension in the “SDG compass” developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for aligning business policies with the UN SDGs. The process of aligning Islamic banking sustainability indicators with the UN SDGs will provide a roadmap to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of economic, environmental, and social issues. Due to the diversity of the UN SDG framework, it covers multiples aspects for sustainable development. Therefore, considering the UN SDGs in terms of various banking instruments will mitigate the multiple distressing impacts of COVID-19 on the triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit), it will also promote a sustainable development agenda. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Increased attention to environmental and social issues has spurred the demand for sustainability measurement theories and methodologies. By analyzing major research streams in the sustainability measurement literature, this chapter sheds light on the evolution of sustainability measurement research, the gaps triggering a fragmentation in the field, and the contributions that measuring sustainability provides to performance measurement and the management literature. We first detail the tools that companies can implement to assess the interplay between sustainability issues and stakeholders, such as stakeholder maps and materiality matrices. Then, we investigate the approaches and the metrics that companies adopt to develop a sustainable performance measurement system, along with sustainability reporting practices. Finally, we propose some emerging themes and future research trends on sustainability measurement.

The concept of sustainable development (SD) is aimed at ensuring public well-being for the present and future generations. Hundreds of methods have been proposed for assessing and comparing the sustainable development of countries and analyzing their contribution to the future of the world. When applied to resource-based economies (RBEs), assessment tools do not take into account the value and impact of mineral resources on SD indicators. The purpose of the study is to reveal the limitations of applying some tools by taking into consideration the specific features of RBEs. Research methods include a correlation analysis between gross national income (GNI) per capita and aggregated indices (the Sustainable Society Index (SSI), the Human Development Index (HDI), and the Environmental Performance Index (EPI)), a comparative analysis of these indices and mining companies&rsquo, performance indicators. Object Eurasian RBEs were selected, but Norway was analyzed separately from the sample. The results of the study show that correlations between GNI per capita and SD indicators are heterogeneous. There is no statistically significant correlation between GNI per capita and SSI, a strong correlation with HDI, and a weak correlation with EPI. The EPI and SSI structures do not reflect the specific features of RBEs.

Se presenta una aproximación metodológica para la definición de indicadores de sostenibilidad urbana en las ciudades costeras desde los procesos del metabolismo urbano de las calles, reconociendo las calles como sistemas por los que transita gran parte de los flujos materiales urbanos que afectan la conectividad entre las estructuras biológicas, las relaciones socioculturales y los índices de vulnerabilidad. Como caso de estudio se tiene la Avenida Juan Ponce de León, la cual se analiza a partir de tres sistemas de indicadores de sostenibilidad: Banco Mundial por ser considerado como referencia válida internacional, LEED USA por ser el sistema de medición de sostenibilidad utilizado en Puerto Rico y BCN Ecología por su enfoque en el metabolismo urbano como herramienta de análisis. La información se recaba mediante Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG), mediciones en sitio y data oficial. El alcance de la fase de la investigación en este artículo tiene dos propósitos principales: 1. Examinar el grado de cumplimiento de la avenida Juan Ponce de León y el entorno urbano relacionado con los indicadores de referencia y 2. Identificar la pertinencia de estos sistemas para la realidad estudiada, reconociendo que los riesgos naturales que afectan el caribe ameritan indicadores específicos que contribuyan a disminuir las condiciones de riesgo que afectan sus ciudades constantemente. En esta fase de la investigación, aún en proceso, se proponen unos términos de referencia para la definición de indicadores de sostenibilidad urbana específicos para San Juan que se espera puedan servir a otras ciudades costeras. A methodological approach is presented for the definition of urban sustainability indicators in coastal cities, from the processes of urban metabolism of the streets, recognizing these as systems through which a large part of the urban material flows affecting the connectivity between biological structures, sociocultural relationships and vulnerability indices. As a case study, there is Avenida Juan Ponce de León, which is analyzed from three systems of sustainability indicators: 1) the World Bank (WB), as it is considered a valid international reference; 2) LEED USA, for being the sustainability measurement system used in Puerto Rico, and 3) BCN Ecology, for its focus on urban metabolism as an analysis tool. The information is collected through geographic information systems (GIS), on-site measurements and official data. The scope of the research phase in this article has two main purposes: 1) to examine the degree of compliance of Juan Ponce de León Avenue and the urban environment concerning the benchmark indicators, and 2) to identify the relevance of these systems to the reality studied, acknowledging that the natural risks affecting the Caribbean merit specific indicators that help to reduce the risk conditions which constantly affect its cities. In this phase of the research, still in process, some terms of reference are proposed for the definition of specific urban sustainability indicators for San Juan, which, hopefully can serve other coastal cities.

Sustainability is a multidisciplinary discipline posing a difficult problem as a result of its integrated assessment. From a broad perspective, it considers the impact of human activities (using different resources) and natural conditions on local environments. Urban development has been identified as one of the most important reasons for environmental and social degradation. To address the complexity of sustainability and its impact, policymakers need to be equipped with the right toolkit to foresee the integrated effect of projects and plans on urban sustainability more effectively in their policy design. In this paper, we propose a tool to assess the sustainable performance of urban areas through a common framework of indicators which provides an integrated measurement based on the relative efficiency of key input variables on desirable and undesirable outputs. Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we propose a procedure for determining the relative efficiency of relevant urban areas, proposing this method as a candidate for integrated sustainability measurement. The selection of variables is based on dimensions which can be addressed from a political perspective for achieving more desirable outputs, or reducing the undesirable ones, controlling for key resources as much as possible. Our analysis takes a comprehensive scope including an environmental and socioeconomic perspective. This will be useful to identify weaknesses and strengths to improve the integrated performance of cities. Our array of indicators, based on standardized key performance indicators (KPIs) will enable policymakers to gather an insightful impact of their proposals in urban sustainability carrying out a global sustainability impact assessment through DEA. The main goal is to gather the urban experience of transforming cities into smarter cities and putting technological progress at the service of their societies.

Measurement in interdisciplinary research can be difficult due to incompatibility of measures used in the different disciplines. These difficulties arise when measurements from different disciplines need to be combined to quantify an attribute for an object of study. Sustainability is a fuzzy concept measured as an attribute of many different objects. Sustainability measurements are often a composition of environmental, economic and social sustainability measurements, which makes them interdisciplinary composite measurements. The present study aims to advance interdisciplinary sustainability research by a systematic review of the interdisciplinary measurement of the attribute sustainability using the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework and to investigate whether measurement issues differ between the environmental, economic and social dimension. A systematic literature review was done based on a query, on Web of Science, that reflected the interdisciplinarity of sustainability science and the TBL framework. Abstracts were scanned for relevance and papers that passed the scan were downloaded and scrutinized for their measurement characteristics such as measurement level, aggregation of scores into composite measurements, and weighting methods. An iterative coding approach (top-down and bottom-up) was used until saturation was reached. The search returned 467 papers, of which 77 contained sufficiently detailed information on the interdisciplinary measurement of sustainability, following the TBL framework. Not all papers in the final set contained sufficiently detailed information on the performed measurements, and if and how the distinct dimensions were combined into one interdisciplinary sustainability measurement. The 86 reported measurement models of sustainability were heterogeneous with respect to measurement levels used, the use of composite scores, weighting schemes and time synchronization between indicators. Two thirds of the measurement models presented composite scores of the attribute sustainability. The weights used in composite scores were in most cases determined using experts’ opinions. Albeit all included papers used the TBL as a framework, their measurement models do not form a coherent set. Fuzzy measurement practices occurred in all three dimensions of sustainability. On closer inspection, and wherever reports were sufficiently specific, interdisciplinary measurement models of sustainability turned out to be near-unique.

Sustainability is a fairly old concept, born in the 18th century in the field of forestry, within a mono-functionality perspective. The concept has considerably evolved in the last few years towards a multi-functionality context, with applications reported in practically all areas of economic interest. On the other hand, modern sustainability is a complex problem, for two reasons: a) The multiplicity of functions of a very different nature involved in the process and b) The manner in which different segments of the society or stakeholders perceive the relative importance of these functions. For the above reasons, a realistic approach for dealing with the sustainability issue requires taking into consideration multiple criteria of different nature (economic, environmental and social), and in many cases within a participatory decision making framework. This book presents a collection of papers, dealing with different theoretical and applied issues of sustainability, with the help of a modern multi-criteria decision-making theory, with a single as well as several stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Hopefully, this material will encourage academics and practitioners to alter their research in this hot and vital topic. A􀀿er all, the sustainable management of the environment and its embedded resources is one of the most important, if not the major challenge of the 21st century.

Non-technical abstract Wealth commonly refers to the measure of the value of all assets or capital owned by an individual, community, company or nation. Sustainable development requires that the per capita productive base or comprehensive wealth of an economy should at least not decline over a period of time. We present here a comprehensive assessment of cross-country productivity over a study period of 1990–2010 for 140 countries. We used the concept of inclusive wealth introduced by the United Nations to assess the social value, rather than dollar price, of all each country's assets, including produced, human and natural capital.

Several ports worldwide use renewable energy sources such as: wind, photovoltaic and wave energy. Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Genoa in Italy, Hartlepool in the United Kingdom, Kitakyushu in Japan, Port Kembla in Australia, Gothenburg in Sweden, ports in Spain, San Diego, Tokyo and Los Angeles can be cited. Regarding Brazilian ports, the Pecem Port in Ceara implemented wave energy; however, due to the need for adjustments and further investments, it is no longer operational. The main goal behind the study is to propose and test a sustainability measurement model for renewable energy sources for Brazilian ports, identifying the most appropriate clean energy. In order to define the evaluation criteria for the model, information from literature, legislation and rulings (environmental, social, economic and national energy policies) were considered alongside an evaluation by 10 experts through the Lawshe method. The criteria were classified through the Phrase Completion scale; the scale presents 11 points, where zero indicates the absence of the attribute (excellence) and 10 indicates the presence of all possible levels of excellence. Finally, the Renewable Energy Sustainability Partial Score, Renewable Energy Sustainability Score and Renewable Energy Corporate Sustainability Grid were applied. This model was applied in a port enterprise located in the South Region of Brazil and indicated that the photovoltaic energy is regarded as the most appropriate to be used, matching the environmental, social and economic criteria. The model is applicable to companies with different characteristics, regardless of industrial sector and geographic location of the company.

Climate change and global warming have hit the boardrooms of corporations more than ever before. Sustainability indices have become important criteria in today’s parlance to assess the risk of investing or collaborating with any company as part of their supply chain strategy. Many international firms provide these indices used by corporations to assess sustainability and collaborate. In a competing scenario, there is a need for companies in developing economies like India to be on par with their counterparts across the world by obtaining good sustainability scores. Towards this, one of the measures the Government in India has taken is mandating transparency in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting through The Companies Act 2013. Since then large amounts of money that have been spent in specific areas have been reported towards achieving the societal needs and as part of that towards greening the supply chain. Using data obtained from the annual reports of NIFTY indexed companies, this paper develops a fuzzy-logic-based model to obtain a sustainability score for companies. The inputs used in the model deal with the triple bottom line criteria—Profit, People and Planet (PPP). Using fuzzy logic, rules have been created that define sustainability. This chapter also discusses the patterns in the sustainability scores obtained with respect to the NIFTY indexed companies.

This paper proposes a probabilistic model for assessing corporate sustainability performance. The need for probabilistic approaches to sustainability measurement is on the rise. Existing approaches to measuring strong sustainability, which emphasize the non-substitutability of resources, overwhelmingly focus on the national- or regional-levels. Few “strong” sustainability models explicitly address performance at the company level. The model proposed in this paper is also unique in that it addresses situations where the variables used to measure performance are dependent on one another. Existing approaches focus on independent variables. The model is provided in a generalized form and offers a straightforward approach to assessing the sustainability performance of corporations. Also discussed in the paper are some managerial and academic implications of the model.

Productivity, profitability and sustainability have become the essence of business survival; thus, modern industrial establishments are turning into frameworks consistent with environmental objectives by adopting cleaner technologies, green practices have ultimately resulting in generation of fewer pollutants. Urbanization and burgeoning technological advancement in different sector within India have brought the concept of green supply chain management, to highlight the importance of responsible consumption and production to maintain environmental quality, reduce wastage and bring out economic growth. This paper aims to segregate the sustainable and competitive performers from the average ones in the Indian manufacturing sector and to understand the degree of the impact of green practices of supply chain management based on their contribution towards sustainable environment. Using survey method, data are collected from 54 manufacturing organizations from Pune Nashik area, and a comprehensive framework of sustainability measurement is developed through successive applications of Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector analysis, CHAID analysis. This paper is unique as it has applied the concept of CHAID analysis for first time to identify green logistics as main driver to achieve a reduction of ecological damage and improve business performance.

Modifying the traditional production system and the culture of consumption is necessary to achieve a sustainable society. The product-service system (PSS) business model allows companies to progres...

Research in sustainability measurement has been growing at a very high pace over the past years, and it has explored a variety of issues, from sustainability disclosure to measurement in green supply chains, from the diffusion of environmental standards to the political use of sustainability metrics. This study is the first to report and discuss the results of a comprehensive review of the sustainability measurement literature. In particular, we adopt a wide conceptualization of the measurement process, and analyze data through a bibliometric method - bibliographic coupling. Our results show that the literature is divided into eight distinct areas of inquiry and 12 sub-fields, some of which have expanded significantly over recent years, and others appear to be waning. Furthermore, the lack of a comprehensive view of sustainability measurement has led to the development of many separate communities, resulting in duplications of effort, incomplete framing of the problem, and the proposal of partial solutions. However, findings drawn in sustainability measurement research could inform current debates in performance measurement and management in three main ways: by emphasizing stakeholders’ roles in the design, implementation and use of measures; by indicating ways to establish common measures and sharing data between organizations; and by adopting novel theoretical perspectives. Equally, future sustainability measurement studies could benefit from consideration of extant research on strategic performance measurement and on the behavioral effects of measurement practices.

Supply chains are critical driving forces behind business competitive advantages, hence their sustainability measurement and management is vital. Determining the sustainability performance of supply chains is challenging. It requires appropriate tools for capturing and analyzing data for every supply chain activity and for each sustainability aspect. This study analyzes measurement approaches that are used to assess sustainability performance of supply chains. Using Content, Context and Process framework, we have studied 104 peer-reviewed articles, published in the literature on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and green supply chain management (GSCM). The results show that various measurement approaches are used to assess sustainability in different sectors and supply chain echelons. The application of multi-criteria decision-making methods is increasing and several promising measurement frameworks have been proposed. The most used approaches include Life Cycle Assessment, Analytical Hierarchy Process, Fuzzy set approach, Balance Scorecard, and Data envelopment analysis. Additionally, this study proposes a novel conceptual framework and provides a concise guideline for assessing sustainability of supply chains. Key challenges that need to be solved by future measurement approaches include sustainability data collection and sharing, metrics standardization, and collaboration among supply chain members per se and stakeholders. This study creates better comprehension of how existing approaches evaluate sustainability of supply chains and provides new insights into sustainability performance measurement approaches, supply chain configuration, and metrics selection.

Sustainability has in recent times attained much acceptance as a result of its positive impact on the environment, social and economic issues. Nevertheless, in developing countries, the price of sustainable construction materials are too high. The aim of the study was to examine drivers militating against the pricing of sustainable construction materials. Through an in-depth review of literature as well as an interview survey, questionnaire was designed and administered to practicing quantity surveyors. Data generated from the survey was analysed using Principal Component Analysis which resulted four main drivers. These included: awareness challenge (AC), sustainability measurement tools challenge (SMTC), economic challenge (EC), and information challenge (IC). The study offers useful lessons on sustainable practices that pricing experts in the construction industry can draw on when pricing.The need for this study cannot be doubted since the consciousness of such challenges will help in resolving issues associated with pricing of sustainable construction materials. Keywords: Drivers, Militating, Pricing, Sustainable construction materials, Ghanaian

Em meio à atual conjuntura de impactos causados pelo desenvolvimento humano, as empresas devem criar mecanismos e formas de avaliação da sustentabilidade para operacionalizar o conceito de desenvolvimento sustentável. O presente trabalho teve o objetivo de avaliar e analisar a sustentabilidade de uma instituição financeira, atuante na região da Amazônia Legal Brasileira, por meio de um estudo de caso, com a aplicação das metodologias de mensuração da sustentabilidade “Global Reporting Initiative” [GRI] e Método de Avaliação dos Indicadores de Sustentabilidade Organizacional [M.A.I.S.], além de análises documentais. A avaliação da sustentabilidade mostrou que a instituição é sustentável nas dimensões social, econômica e ambiental, mas necessita melhorar nos aspectos referentes à dimensão cultural. = In the current context of impacts caused by human development, companies must create mechanisms and forms of sustainability assessment to operationalize the concept of sustainable development. The present work had the objective of evaluating and analyzing the sustainability of a financial institution, operating in the Brazilian Legal Amazon region, through a case study, applying the Global Reporting Initiative [GRI] (2008) and Method of Evaluation of Organizational Sustainability Indicators M.A.I.S. (2002), as well as documentary analyzes. The sustainability assessment showed that the institution is sustainable in the social, economic and environmental dimensions, but needs to improve in aspects related to the cultural dimension.

Sustainability analysis practice has so far proved that measurement of the level of sustainable development (SD) is associated with a large number of methodological difficulties and limitations, related mainly to the selection of indicators, data processing and interpretation of the results. This study is based on an assumption that SD should be measured in ways that depend on the level of development of the country, i.e., it is highly recommended to develop separate sets of indicators to be used for highly developed, medium-developed and poor countries. To that end, we carried out the study on a sample of 13 Southeast European (SEE) countries, and Germany and the Russian Federation for comparison—which are at different levels of development and overall political and socio-economic ambients. The research includes analysis by three different approaches to SD, each based on different sets of indicators: a “GDP approach” which is traditional, and in which economic and GDP-based indicators hold the dominant role; a “Beyond-GDP approach” that reduces the use of economic indicators while increasing the share of social indicators and those based on natural resources; and an “SDG-based approach” that is mainly using indicators of quality of life as defined by the United Nations (UN) SDG. The analysis was performed using the method of composite indicators. Groups of 20 indicators were selected according to their suitability to each of the 3 above-described approaches. The study objective leads to examining ways for measuring development, to suggest new ones, recommend approaches to sustainability planning for the considered SEE countries and beyond, to contribute to the analysis methodology (by assessing usability and reliability of certain indicators and of linkages between them), as well as to rank the countries’ levels of SD under these approaches. Some of the main conclusions are: (a) the indicators having the highest potential impact on the level of SD were foreign direct investments, public debt, energy imports, total natural resources rents, terrestrial and marine protected areas, vulnerable employment, and the Corruption Index; (b) use of the Inclusive Wealth Index is encouraged, so it is important to advance proper methodologies for its measurement; (c) Slovenia and Hungary were the highest-ranked SEE countries under all three approaches, just under Germany; and (d) the ranking order under the SDG-based approach could be used to identify the prioritization of development effort and funding that countries should apply and receive for meeting the SDG. Recommendations for further sustainability measurement were made based on the study’s findings.

This study presents an extension of a recently proposed concept and metric by the authors named “Sustainability profit” to “Sustainability net present value” for the purpose of synthesizing more sustainable large-scale energy supply networks. The concept and metric are based on a composite sustainability measurement considering economic, environmental and social pillars and expressed in monetary terms from a wider macro-economic perspective that combines both the governmental and the industrial view. By using the proposed metric, it is possible to obtain answers regarding the advisability of a particular investment in terms of sustainability. The concept is illustrated by two examples: (i) a smaller case study presenting an electricity supply network consuming fossil and/or renewable energy sources, and (ii) a larger-scale renewable energy supply network considering biomass, waste, solar, wind and geothermal energies on an EU continental scale. Solutions obtained to problems regarding maximizing Sustainability net present value occur at the trade-off between economic profitability, environmental (un)burdening, and new jobs created, considering the time value of the money involved.

Critical success factors (CSFs) are the enablers to address the successful implementation of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices in organizations. This study identifies and consolidates various relevant factors to develop the SSCM constructs conducive to supply chains in the Indian steel sector. A comprehensive framework of sustainability measurement has been developed through successive stages of data collection, analysis and refinement. Data have been collected from various departments of Tata Steel, SAIL, Essar and Jindal in India. The outcome of this research is a set of reliable, valid and unidimensional first-order measurements that can be subsequently used in conceptualization and measurement of the sustainability of supply chains in steel industry. Using factor analysis, we identify four constructs, namely favourable organizational environment, sustainable procurement initiatives, compliances to sustainability standards and external environmental pressures, which the organizations need to focus on. Additionally, using relative importance index ranking based on the survey data, the top three CSFs are compliance to environmental standards (ISO 14001 certification), safety and health focus (OHSAS 18001 certification) and top leadership commitment and support-all of which are within the organization’s own control. This study contributes to the continuing research of supply chain sustainability and provides supply chain managers with a practical approach for measuring and implementing sustainability practices across the steel supply chains.

Ratings are an increasingly popular part of urban sustainability governance and are widely understood as tools to guide policy and ensure transparency. This understanding is part of a more general shift in governance towards “New Public Management” that emphasizes public accountability and the accuracy of quantitative metrics and technical knowledge in policy evaluation. But critics have assessed ratings as broader mechanisms of governmentality, through which authorities shape, instrumentalize, and control conduct, and promote particular urban trajectories, in politicized ways. This paper examines STAR Communities, a recently developed urban sustainability rating system in the USA, to understand how such ratings behave at the interface of knowledge and policy, and how seeking transparency through ratings can produce unexpected outcomes that evade sustainability. This paper is not a critique of a specific rating system or set of indicators, but does yield a critique of the kinds of unexpected outcomes that are possible when we privilege quantitative measures of achievement. The study finds: 1) ratings are often used as labels rather than as policy inputs; 2) ratings can exacerbate existing inequalities and create new inequalities within and between municipalities because, while ratings can bring financial benefits, certification demands significant financial and political resources; and, 3) ratings can incentivize the realignment of governance priorities, as cities ‘grab’ points by pursuing quickly implemented, uncontroversial, and politically ‘safe’ policies and programs. The study also finds that sustainability managers continue to pursue quantitative sustainability measurement because of dominant assumptions that ‘counting is what counts’.

Sustainability measurement in economics includes assessment of environmental and economic effects in an integrated manner. In this study, system level economic data are integrated with environmental impacts determined from a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a common product. We adopt a costing methodology that captures conventional costs, but additionally incorporates externality costs to present a convenient, easily interpretable metric. Green Net Value Added (GNVA) is a type of full cost accounting that incorporates total revenue, the cost of production, depreciation, and environmental externalities. We present externality costs disaggregated by upstream sectors, full cost of production, and GNVA to evaluate the relative sustainability of Bounty® paper towels manufactured at two production facilities. We found that the longer running, more established line had a higher GNVA. The predominant components contributing to externality costs come from the stationary sources in the supply chain: electricity generation (27–35%), refineries (20–21%), pulp and paper making (15–23%). Health-related externalities from Particulate Matter (PM2.5) and Carbon Dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions are to a great extent driven by electricity usage and emissions by the facilities, followed by pulp processing and transport. Supply chains for other facility purchases, product distribution, and end-of-life management contribute the least to the environmental health-related costs.

The purpose of this study was to improve the sustainability measurement of indicators by using corporate social responsibilities (CSR) reports, examine the degree of interaction between these indicators, and analyze the trend of the performance towards the CS goals set up over the past years. If managers review and identify key indicators regularly, these key indicators will help arrive at long-term performance goals, which will also be an essential reference for the transportation industry's business decision-making. Most of the selected indicators suffer from a significant technical problem: all of the measurement dimensions are independent, leading to inadequate indicators for measuring CS/CSR. Our calculations consider the interrelationships and effects among the evaluation dimensions and indicators to precisely rank and select indicators. This study's value is that it provides HSR with a direction for measuring and improving their CSR to develop sustained competitive advantage over the long term. This study implemented Taiwan's Railway Transportation Corporate as a case study and applied the DEMATEL-ANP Based Method (DANP) to analyze and standardize discrete indicator and synthetic performance indices using critical indicators from CSR reports. The results showed that the Service Quality (SQ), Operation Effect, and Customer Satisfaction (CS) were ranked the top three key factors, and the discrete indicators and synthetic performance indices of the corporate were all positive and consistent with the trend of its sustainable development.

Investors increasingly demand that asset managers measure the non-financial performance of their investment portfolios. Amidst concerns of greenwashing, reliable sustainability assessment methods are needed to ensure that funds are channeled towards priority sectors for the transition to a low-carbon and more inclusive economy. This critical review provides a classification, analysis and evaluation of current sustainability measurement methods for investment funds from both industry and academia. The evaluation is based on a seven-criteria matrix, developed based on gaps identified in seminal academic works and in reports from international organizations. Following the evaluation, we find that carbon footprints and exposure metrics and environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings, while widely used, have several shortcomings, failing to capture the real-world sustainability impact of investments. We suggest that open-source, science-based and sustainability-driven assessment methods are prioritized going forward. Methods can be upgraded by incorporating measurement of positive impact creation and by adopting a life cycle perspective. Given the need to anchor sustainability assessments in the reality, the compatibility of investment products with science-based targets for sustainable development should become a central element of reporting requirements. Finally, methods incorporating a forward-looking perspective, as well as an assessment of investor's additionality are scarce and should be given priority in future research.

The vulnerability of European nations to climate change has been the focus of the EU for the past number of decades. Changes within weather systems such as increase in precipitation, snow and ice events, heatwaves and storms have led the EU Commission to develop new policies and strategies to deal with these extreme events. Changes within weather patterns are locked in for the coming number of decades, and thus, adaptation strategies at local and national levels have been developed to counteract or protect vulnerable communities from these effects. Furthermore, mitigation strategies that deal with the causes of climate change have also been developed at local and national levels as the EU strives to be a carbon-neutral society. As the development of these strategies continues, a robust set of sustainability measurement indicators are required for assessing the impacts of climate change at local and national levels. Furthermore, the identification of indicators that will directly be affected and influenced by the New Green Deal will be critical in assessing the impacts of our responses to climate change. Indicators should not be reliant on a single parameter but rather have a multidisciplinary scope taking into account, social, cultural and economic changes.

There are various processes which can be used for wastewater treatment (WT), and the selection of the most sustainable one among different processes is a hard task. This study aims at helping the decision-makers (DM) to address this by developing an intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) theory based group multi-attribute decision analysis (MADA) method. Ten criteria in environment, economy, society-politic, and technology dimensions were employed to achieve sustainability measurement (SM) of WT processes. The multi-criteria sustainability assessment method developed in this study allow different experts to attend the SM, and enable the participants to employ the natural language/words to depict their intuitionistic opinions. Accordingly, the proposed method can achieve group SM under uncertainties. An illustrative case including four processes for wastewater treatment, namely Anaerobic-Anoxic-Oxic (AAO) process, Triple Oxidation Ditch (TOD) process, Anaerobic single-ditch oxidation (ASD) process, and Sequencing batch reactor activated sludge process (SBR), has been studied, and the results reveal that this method can determine sustainability sequence of different WT processes.

This paper analyzes productivity and efficiency by using inclusive wealth as a sustainability measurement. The study extends current measures of sustainability by capturing the efficient utilization of natural capital and other conventional inputs as input and carbon damage as undesirable output in a productivity measure for 140 countries from 1995 to 2010. To determine the contribution of each input/output to productivity and technical efficiency, we applied a weighted Russell directional distance and a Luenberger productivity measure. We found that GDP, natural capital and carbon damage are the main contributors to productivity change. Natural capital and carbon damage remain significant burdens for many countries' performance, especially for countries with resource-driven economies and extreme vulnerability to climatic shifts. This finding enhances our understanding of how particular countries can measure and manage their sustainability. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

In order to pursue sustainable development, appropriate sustainability measurement at the local scale is critical. However, few efforts have been made in this regard. This paper aims to fill such a gap by introducing the development of China National Demonstration Sustainable Communities (CNDSCs) and reviewing its indicator system. Research findings indicate that the current indicator system did provide valuable guidance on help different communities to move toward sustainable development as it reflects political tendency and evaluates effectiveness of public policies. However, this system is insufficient to evaluate the holistic nature of sustainable communities because it lacks integration among different aspects, such as the adequate consideration on regional disparity, lack of universal methods on data collection and calculation, as well as the linkage with local officials' performance. Further improvements should be made by involving more stakeholders so that their different concerns can be addresses. In addition, region-specifi Indicators should be developed with clear official guide on how to implement them in the realities.

Eco-aware customers and stakeholders are demanding for a measurement that links environmental performance with other business operations. To bridge this seemingly measurement gap, this paper suggests ‘Eco-Ratio Analysis’ and proposes an approach for conducting eco-ratio analysis. It is argued that since accounting ratios function as a tool for evaluating corporate financial viability by management and investors, eco-ratio analysis should be brought to the fore to provide a succinct measurement about the linkage between environmental performance and conventional business performance. It is hoped that this suggestion will usher in a nuance debate and approach in the teaching, research and practice of environmental management and sustainability accounting.

Various surveys reveal that many stakeholders deem current sustainability performance measurement and assessment approaches insufficient for their needs. In light of the large and growing number of publications, this exposes a major practice-research gap. To explore the gap between the flourishing number of publications and the disappointment of stakeholders, this paper analyzes how current literature on sustainability performance measurement and assessment addresses stakeholder expectations. Based on a systematic literature review, the paper distinguishes stakeholders and their expectations on different roles in the sustainability performance measurement and assessment process: standard setters, process enablers, information providers, impacted stakeholder, decision makers, and addressees. The analysis of individual roles reveals that stakeholder expectations are rarely specifically considered; in particular, expectations of decision makers have received little attention in the literature, so far. This paper systematically categorizes the expectations expressed in the academic literature and critically discusses current gaps. The literature review shows that stakeholder expectations have not been considered in depth, which is a possible explanation for the dissatisfaction of stakeholders with current sustainability performance measurement and assessment approaches. Implications for bridging the gap are drawn, including the need for empirical analyses of expectations relating to different stakeholder roles in sustainability measurement and assessment processes.

Performance Monitoring has evolved as a powerful sustainability measurement tool for supply chains. It allows managers to look beyond providing services or investments to actually understand the outcomes generated in the field. COSA and WDI help organizations to apply technically functional Performance Monitoring tools within diverse supply chains. Even with the sometimes difficult circumstances in developing countries, Performance Monitoring can provide information feedback loops so that managers can track sustainability performance throughout the project lifespan and thereby improve the likelihood of having successful outcomes. This chapter examines the challenges and benefits of implementing Performance Monitoring in supply chains, offers best practices in implementation, and illustrates lessons and limitations with case studies of the tool in use.