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Ecospace Audit - An input Analysis for Products 4. Evaluation of the project1. General The companies that tested the Eco-space audit found it interesting because of the different perspective taken, com pared to existing methods such as LCA which focus more on emissions. The focus on resource inputs, as well as the more unusual but important land use, combined with the broadening to the social aspects was much apprecia ted. These elements are seen as issues that come up anyway in society for which the business sector needs to pre pare itself. Equally important is that the people involved judge that equity and social issues as well as resource use are important values to respect as a company. Irina Maslennikova, Xerox Europe: "We found the process of going through the Ecospace Audit to be a useful exercise helping to better understand Xerox 's "triple bottom line "accountability in a very focused, practical way. It certainly added important new dimensions to the scope of issues we would now consider ". David Foley, Xerox Europe: "Taking a different perspective on our business impacts proved a useful exercise. The targets the audit produces give real food for thought, and focus the aims of carrying out the audit. Bringing in social considerations are a welcome addition to a 'sustainability tool '. " The process of auditing has strongly influenced and improved this final version. Nevertheless, this report should be considered as work in progress rather than a 'final result '. 2. Transparency It is still unusual for suppliers to provide details on their social and environmental performance related to specific products or services, let alone that they provide detailed data on their suppliers 'resource origins. This audit is in fact a call for more transparency over the entire life cycle of the product. Anyone applying this audit is therefore likely to run into some problems when trying to find out social and environmental data upstream. According to the companies involved, this should not be a reason to abstain from such efforts. According to Peter Malaise of Ecover: "In the long run we can create a more transparent situation with respect to the origin of resources if we keep asking questions to our suppliers, maintaining that no answer indicates a bad score for that resource. " 3. Comprehensiveness According to the comments received, the audit appears to include all the relevant aspects. However, in the social aspects, employment has not been included. Various people suggested that this was an important element of pro duction, considering companies that make large groups of workers redundant for higher profits are irresponsible, only answering to shareholders and not stakeholders. On the other hand, discussing ways to include this, we could not find a generally accepted standard for this point. The guarantee that trade unions are informed and remain cri tical seemed the best guarantee against unnecessary dismissals. Especially the allocation of production to low wage countries was a good example: it might be of great advantage to developing countries as long as labour conditions are fair. 4. Compensation for better or worse performance? Some products, services of companies might have better or worse rates of efficiency than others: should that alter the target that a company sets for itself? We introduced an optional 'compensation factor 'for products that perform better or worse than average. However, lack of data will often make this a difficult factor to quantify. After some debate on omitting this factor, we kept it in. If companies choose not to fill in a figure for that option, discussing it can still help to clarify the company 's position and to consider whether it does change its challenge significantly. 5. User-friendliness The large number of boxes in the presented tables, the linear structure of a paper
document, as well as the difficulty in locating all the relevant data posed the biggest
problem for the users. At present the Ecospace Audit requires similar knowledge and skills
as are needed for making LCAs. There is general agreement that the Ecospace Audit can
increase enormously in value for a broad group if adequate software is developed, which
gui des the user through the audit and enables him/her to go through it in a linear,
lateral or circular way. 6. Qualify or quantify? Especially for the social aspects we chose not to make a quantitative score, as the
judgement is rather subjective and data on the social conditions further back in the chain
are often incomplete. Companies should make a relia ble assessment or themselves, and look
at it rom an analytical point of view. On the other hand, one of the com panies suggested
providing the Ecospace Audit with the possibility of making a more or less objective score
for the social aspects, preferably in software that should be developed. 7. Defining growth scenarios This was clearly a difficult point in the Ecospace Audit. People at companies -especially marketing peoplelike to think in realistic scenarios and the suggested years seemed too far away for any realistic 'predictions '. The text has been adapted to stress the theoretical, 'what if 'type of approach, which seeks to challenge and to rethink gene rally accepted 'common sense', taking account of increased penetration levels of products, increased user intensi ty and a growing population. Some large companies could involve the strategic experts, but many smaller compa nies won 't have these. We hope the scenario examples in the text will encourage others to dare to think in scena rios as well. |