Assessing Sustainability
Why Assess?
It’s important to assess your sustainability efforts to:
- Establish a baseline so you know what is currently happening, and can later determine how much you’ve improved
- Monitor whether your efforts are resulting in improvement
To do so it’s necessary to establish some “indicators” and “metrics”.
Indicators and Metrics
Indicators help you understand where you are, which way you are going and how far you are from where you want to be. They are relevant issues that relate to an organization’s sustainability. Indicators should accurately reflect the presence or absence of that dimension.
- Lagging Indicators give signals after the fact, and show progress. Most indicators are lagging.
- Leading Indicators give an indication of what’s coming; for example, whether specific programs are in place that will lead to sustainability.
Characteristics of a good indicator:
- Clarity
- Measurability
- Relevance
- Validity
- Consistency and Reliability
- Comprehensiveness
- Cost Effectiveness
- Comparability
- Available data
Number of indicators: Indicators need to be carefully selected so that just a few will reflect sustainability status. If there are too many they become impossible to reasonably track.
Metrics are the specific measurable quantity that’s monitored to determine how the indicator is performing.
SOSI Sustainability Indicators: SOSI is developing a set of indicators and metrics specific to schools/districts for each topic area it works with. Each set will be available in the Resources section as soon as each is developed.
For more information about indicators go to:
- Japan for Sustainability: http://www.japanfs.org/en/view/index/index.html
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Canadian Sustainability Indicators Network (CSIN): http://www.csin-rcid.ca/
- Sustainable measures: http://www.sustainablemeasures.com/index.html
- Redefining progress: http://www.rprogress.org/ and http://www.rprogress.org/energyfootprint/.
Sustainability Assessment Tools
An assessment tool includes a set of indicators and performance levels for each. The ultimate performance level should be full sustainability, or even beyond that to a restorative level. While this may often not be achievable today it is important to recognize what the goal must be.
COMING IN THE FUTURE: Eventually, performance levels will be determined for each of the SOSI indicators to create a SOSI Sustainability Assessment Tool.
Meanwhile there are some other tools to consider:
- An Ecological Footprint measures the amount of biologically productive land and water area an individual, a city, a country, a region, or all of humanity uses to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates with today’s technology and resource management practices.
- Global Footprint Network: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/
- Redefining progress: http://www.rprogress.org/ and http://www.rprogress.org/energyfootprint/.
- ASHEE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) is developing a Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS), which is currently being piloted: http://www.aashe.org/stars/.
- EPA’s HealthySEAT (Healthy School Environments Assessment Tool) is not a full sustainability tool, but it does have a detailed list of environmental, safety and health-related issues specific to school districts. It is a fully customizable and easy to use software program designed to help school districts evaluate and manage ALL of their environmental, safety and health issues. It is free and available for download: http://www.epa.gov/schools/healthyseat/
- SCORE (Sustainability Competency & Opportunity Rating and Evaluation): SCORE assesses the degree to which you've incorporated sustainability into your business practices, using 3 performance levels. It is not specifically designed for schools. Learn more at: http://www.zerowaste.org/score/index.htm