EMAS als ökologisches Gütesiegel

Zentrales Ziel der EG-Öko-Audit-Verordnung ist es, den betrieblichen Umweltschutz zu verbessern und die mit der Unternehmenstätigkeit verbundenen Umweltwirkungen zu verringern. Fünf Jahre nach Inkrafttreten steht nun die Revision des Systems an. Dies ist der Anlaß kritisch Position zu beziehen

Sustainability assessment in the German detergent industry: from stakeholder involvement to sustainability indicators

Since the early years of environmentalism, the detergent industry has been under pressure from NGOs and consumers. While the path towards an integrated product policy has been set, further developments towards sustainability are necessary. In a project conducted by the University of Oldenburg in cooperation with the German Detergent Manufacturers Association (IKW), future potentials for sustainable development were investigated. From this, a set of indicators was developed. This paper will review the project methodology, where a stakeholder assessment plays a key role, and present some findings. Stakeholder interviews and two workshops allowed discovery of the central issues to be tackled by the German detergent industry. The environmental product life-cycle and stakeholder concept provide the theoretical basis for the so called sustainability matrices, one each for the environmental, economic and social dimensions. These matrices were used to facilitate discussions regarding relevant sustainability issues and indicators. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Two dimensions of corporate sustainability assessment: towards a comprehensive framework

Over the last years, many approaches have emerged that attempt to measure the contribution of firms to sustainable development, i.e. corporate sustainability. Our review of existing methodologies for the assessment of corporate sustainability reveals two major shortcomings. First, value creation as a core condition for sustainability as well as for further contributions to economic sustainability is often ignored in these assessments, suggesting that financial and non-financial organizational processes are separable. Second, existing approaches fail to differentiate between the actual contribution of a firm to sustainability on the one hand, and governance-related features aimed at attaining this contribution on the other. We argue that the implementation of sustainability-oriented organizational structures and managerial instruments alone does not necessarily quarantee sustainability performance. Therefore, besides the dimension of current sustainability performance, we introduce the notion of sustainability governance as a second distinct dimension of corporate sustainability assessment