Afprøvning af ISO 14031 English SummaryISO 14031:1999 – Environmental Performance Evaluation Guidelines – a new powerful tool from ISO. 7 Danish and 17 international examples (ISO TR 14032: 1999) demonstrates that ISO 14031 – environmental performance evaluation guidelines – is a useful tool to be used as guidance for establishing simple environmental management systems, a tool to focus the content of EMAS & ISO 14001 and a tool for measuring and reporting performance trends over time. Background and purpose Environmental Performance Evaluation (EPE) Guidelines has been under preparation since 1993 and has been published as ISO 14031:1999 at 15. November 1999. The purpose of the present project is to investigate the use of 14031 in real life. The results of the present project have already been used as valuable contribution to Danish comments and papers as part of the Danish efforts to influence, develop and finalize 14031. Overlap between consultants of this project and the Danish delegates in the standardizing work did secure, that gained experience were used immediately. The examples have been evaluated further by reviewing the selected indicators against environmental information requested by the authorities as stated in the green act. The purpose of this evaluation was to disclose if the environmental indicators could be used for future regulations. The principle of Environmental Performance Evaluation is, that the organization selects the significant environmental aspects by analysing the environmental aspects of the organisation, the views of third parties and the management criteria. On this basis management select the environmental aspects to be managed. A set of indicators is constructed for each aspect showing trends over time, progress on the action plans and the results on the emissions to the environment. The guideline deals with management performance indicators (MPI), operational performance indicators (OPI) and environmental condition indicators (ECI). The organisation develops a performance measuring system using all 3 types of indicators. Performance measuring includes:
The information provides the organisation with increased knowledge on cause-effect relationship for the selected aspects and increased knowledge on the technical and managerial processes. The organisation evaluates periodically if changes in the marketplace or the society make it desirable to manage new environmental aspects, to develop new indicators or to improve the EPE in place. The investigation ISO 14031, Committed Draft 1 have been used as basis for the present project. The CD1 document is written in English and deviates at a few points from the final version of ISO 14031. The CD1 document has been translated to Danish during the project but time delay caused that only the English version was available for the pilots during their test. These facts might explain some of the observed misunderstandings. 7 pilots have tested ISO 14031 together with consultants from Deloitte & Touche, Rambøll, VKI and Ernst & Young. The analysis, the processing and the assessing of the collected material has been performed by Kristian Eg Løkkegaard from Ernst & Young. The pilots were Banestyrelsen, Frederiksborg Linnedservice A/S, Renholdningsselskabet af 1898 (R-98), McDonalds Danmark, Wewers Teglværker A/S, MD Foods and Toyota Risskov A/S. The pilots of the project were found amongst companies with an EMS in place, companies currently implementing an EMS and companies without an EMS. ISO 14031 has furthermore been used as process for introducing environmental management systems in small electroplating shops and as a tool to report the electricity consumption from a privat household. The pilot tests have been reported as examples that can be read independently of each other. Main conclusions The investigation demonstrated that ISO 14031 is a powerful and useful instrument that can be used as
Use of the ISO 14031 guidelines as process generates simple environmental management systems focusing at:
The characteristics of the simple EMS-systems are:
It is a good choice to use the ISO 14031 guidelines when establishing an EMS; typical as first step in an EMS in accordance with ISO 14001 or EMAS system. The project showed that pilots without an EMS only possess a vague idea concerning its own environmental performance criteria. It might be because such pilots solve environmental problems if they are force to do so by their customers, the media or the environmental authorities. ISO 14031 is a powerful tool that can be used when fulfilling the requirements of ISO 14001, 4.3.1 - environmental aspects. The usage of ISO 14031 leads to
ISO 14031 do not offer a practical tool for the initial environmental review. Neither do the guideline provide a tool for prioritising the identified environmental aspects. ISO 14031 is a useful tool that can be used when fulfilling the requirements of ISO 14001, 4.3.3 - objectives & targets and ISO 14001, 4.3.4 - environmental management program. Managing the environmental aspects becomes more
ISO 14031 is an excellent tool that should be used when the organisation elaborates the content requested in ISO 14001, 4.4.6 (operational control) and in ISO 14001, 4.5.1 (monitoring and measurement). ISO 14031 suggests that the organisation establish a "control loop" for each environmental aspect to be managed. The loop contains the following elements:
We experienced that the "control loop" might be difficult or impossible to establish, if the requirements to the accuracy of the indicators becomes too ambitious. High accuracy of an indicator may require huge amount data collected very often and with a high data quality. We experienced that the organisation faced paralysis because 1) the lack of data created uncertainty by management 2) causing that they could not assess the scale and significance of the environmental aspects 3) causing that they were not able to choose indicators 1) relevant for the data collection to follow. ISO 14031 gives no guidance on data accuracy in spite of the fact that the user is forced to form an opinion on the topic. ISO 14031 can be used beneficially as checklist or more precisely as audit criterion for the management review when auditing the environmental performance of the organisation or the framework of the environmental management system. The legal act of Denmark requires polluting companies to elaborate green accounting. Experience shows, that environmental reporting in accordance with the ISO 14031 guidelines leads to green accounts containing: baseline data, management comments and performance indicators. The same elements as required by law. The content of the environmental report is heavily influenced by the choice of indicators. Experience from the marketplace shows that environmental reports deal with OPIs, a few MPIs but no ECIs. This implies that efficient use of ISO 14031 as core element in environmental reporting and green accounting can be improved considerably if the authorities explicit requests
We experienced that ISO 14031 is fully compatible with ISO 14001. ISO 14031 cover the "environmental parts" of 14001. ISO 14001 also provides the user with guidelines on how to set up an environmental management organisation. We found that ISO 14031 might be difficult to read and understand for a normal company. Even consultants might misunderstand the concepts of the ISO 14031 guidelines. Project results ISO 14031 used as tool in ISO 14001 The 7 pilots had no mandate how to test ISO 14031 or parts thereof. The rational was that the pilots experience with environmental management differed so much that their needs for 14031 would be different. The project results underline this assumption. This report tries to present the results as a mosaic reflecting the ISO 14031 process. Environmental aspects, the view of interested parties and the management criterion leads to selection of indicators. These are vitalised in the operational control loop and used as basis for making decisions. ISO 14031, help box 1, recommends 7 different approaches that an organisation can use to find its environmental aspects. Frederiksborg Linnedservice, R-98 and other pilots with EMS did not test this part of the guideline. Banestyrelsen, who is implementing an EMS reviewed all known environmental aspects. The review did not identify new EAs. Instead they recognized why the EAs have been appointed as significant. Wewers Teglværker has decided to integrate the environmental management into the existing organisation. The company management has a pragmatic approach to the work and selected as starting point to focus on environmental aspects with great potential for economic savings. Other environmental problems are solved when the shows up. Wewers focus their work at how to establish the measuring system allowing them to measure trends over time. It seems that the pilot has not captured the concept of indicators fully. The pilot has some difficulties to distinguish an environmental aspect from an indicator. The consultant and the pilot have included a list with selected indicators. It is obvious however that the list has been used as a request list and not as inspiration. McDonald and Toyota Risskov have clearly been inhibited in their work to develop indicators because they have had no data. In fact the process stopped at Toyota Risskov. This illustrates that the idea of selection indicators prior to data collection might be difficult to capture. If data exists they can be transformed into graphs showing the trend over time using an indicator (for example the electricity consumption measured as kWh/day for a period of 5 years). Visualising the trend as graph is powerful and leads to action. The paradox might be that the existing data not necessarily deals with the most significant environmental aspects. It is required to establish an interactive relationship between the indicator thinking and the performance data. Banestyrelsen used the ISO 14031s guidelines in their work on establishing measurable environmental targets. The pilot has correctly selected indicators before it investigated the presens of the raw data to be collected. The rational behind the ISO 14031 approach is that indicators should be used to manage an environmental aspect and not only as passive indicator for measuring environmental performance. The choice of performance indicators requires an active decision on what to manage, how to manage and how to measure the performance over time. Banestyrelsen felt that selecting indicators before having any data was an odd but very useful approach. The pilot stated that the approach recommended in ISO 14031 leads to an active decision making process. None of the 7 pilots have commented on their experience with collecting data, analysing data and converting these to information, assessing the information and reporting the results to the users. We found however that MD Foods (Grenå Mejeri) and Sophus Berendsen (Frederiksborg Linnedservice) have established and developed systems for monitoring and measuring environmental performance of selected EAs. These systems have been build after the same principles as later on described in ISO 14031, chapter 3.3. Both organisations have developed indicators to be used for benchmarking of own companies. R98 and Frederiksborg Linnedservice have used ISO 14031, anneks A as tool during the management review. Both organisations found that this usage of 14031 was fruitful. Indicators, permits and environmental reporting Reviewing all examples reveals that the selected indicators can be grouped as follows well knowing that the figures are heavily influenced by the project itself:
Approximate 5 % of the indicators deal with environmental aspects regulated by the emission limits of the environmental permit. The figure indicates that relevant ECIs are perceived to be the job of the environmental authorities and to be reflected in the environmental permit. It belongs to the picture that 50 - 70 % of the management performance indicators identified during the project is planned to be used in the future whereas less than 30 % are being used for the time being. The examples shows that use of ISO 14031 leads to generation of the data material to be used in green accounts eventually presented as graphs showing the trend over time. The trends are commented automatic because the owner of the environmental aspect evaluates the trend just by seeing it. The comments and activities to follow (planned or performed) correspond to the management report. The remaining part is the base-line data providing the reader with background information on the company allowing him to evaluate the environmental performance information given in the environmental report. It is possible to convert permit limits into indicators allowing the green account to become a valuable tool to be used as documentation for keeping the environmental permit limits.
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