When looking at corporate sustainability claims and targets, some metrics matter more than others.
Absolute metrics matter a lot. Did your company reduce carbon emissions from last year? By how much? What about waste? Are you generating more or less?
Not nearly as significant are relative metrics. Greenhouse gas emissions per dollar of revenue are interesting, but efficiency only goes so far when it comes to protecting the planet. Using less packaging per product is laudable, but if your firm is sells more products every year, it could well be increasing its environmental footprint, too.
I’ve written about this before (See How much of a difference can Walmart really make?, Inside Mars' science-based quest for sustainability and P&G: A bold green vision but…) because it seems to be to me crucial to corporate accountability. I’m revisiting the topic, briefly, today because of an announcement last week from Sprint–and because, thankfully, a growing number of people inside and outside of business are paying attention to what’s being called sustainability context.
First, Sprint. To its credit, Sprint was the first and, to date, the only U.S. telecom company to publicly announce an absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction goal, the company says. By 2017, Sprint intends to reduce GHG emissions by an absolute 20 percent compared to 2007 levels– even as the company grows, or at least hopes to.
Last week, Sprint said that its 2011 analysis showed an absolute emissions reduction by 3.5 percent versus 2010. The company also, for the first time, released its “emissions intensity” metrics (the ratio of emissions compared to the amount of data transmitted) and found a year-over-year reduction of 31 percent.
It did so for competitive reasons–because rivals like AT&T talk about their emissions reductions in relative terms. AT&T’s emissions numbers are hard to find on its website — you’d think they would be here or here but they’re not. Several searches led me to AT&T’s 2011 sustainability report (which you can download from this page) and there, the company says:
We reduced the electricity consumption of our company relative to data growth on our network by 16.5 percent in 2011 as compared with year 2010.
One reason why Sprint reduced its “relative” number was because outsiders were comparing AT&T’s 16.5 percent relative reduction to Sprint’s 3.5 percent absolute reduction. Now that Sprint has released its own relative metric, you can see that it is progressing nearly twice as fast as AT&T.
Next page: AT&T, by the numbers
Underwriters Laboratories
Underwriters Laboratories Standard 880 attempts to put context to a companies environmental (and social) claims and to allow for apples-to-apples comparisons between manufacturers.
First, thanks to Marc for his
First, thanks to Marc for his focus on this key issue in sustainability. To answer Claire's question for my own part, if I may, no, the 10,000 figure would not be the denominator, or at least would not be the denominator from a sustainability context perspective. A legitimate or meaningful denominator from a sustainability context perspective would be one that is grounded in the carrying capacity of a vital capital resource, as in one that has ecological limits to it or minimum thresholds for human well-being.
In the case of the 5114 alternative fuel vehicles, it really does't mater how many they have. Rather, it matters what their total greenhouse gas emissions are as a company compared to what they ought to be in order to be sustainable - ecologically, that is, if generalized to the relevant population as a whole. More on that later, I guess.
Regards,
Mark
Context Also Includes the
Context Also Includes the Full Value Chain
Well said. I agree than numbers without context are all but meaningless. And we continue to see it every day.
Another dimension to context is looking at the full life cycle or value chain. For example, Apple has some good contextual information at www.apple.com/environment that clearly shows where the carbon footprint hot spots are in their value chain - in their upstream supply chain and product use. Beware of claims that only focus on one aspect of the value chain.
Finally, we need to recognize that sometimes lack of context is innocent to the extent that the originator simply doesn't know better. However, there are a lot of sophisticated folks out there that are trying to manipulate their image and your preception of them by leaving out the context, or purposely distorting it. Be vigilant and ask the hard questions.
La lutte continue. Without
La lutte continue. Without context, numbers are just data. With context, they have a chance of being information.
I fondly remember a talk by then EPA Administrator Steven Johnson some years ago. Last year, he bragged from the podium, we recycled 600,000 tons (or some large number) of municipal solid waste. He beamed. I fretted. Was that a lot, or a little? Don't know. Was it better than last year, or worse? Don't know. Have we learned anything. Clearly not. Accurate data that's absolutely useless. It's everywhere.
Same problem with graphs in newspapers -- even the venerable NY Times. You've seen it: a view of the top of a tall column chart, with the context of the full chart, so a 1% change looks like a 60% change. Sure, the detail's there in the legend for those who look, but who looks?
(I laid out some of the principles in 2008 in Environmental Quality Management: EcoMetrics: Integrating direct and indirect environmental costs and benefits into management information systems [924k PDF] and explored there application in 2004: Key sustainability KPIs: The simple, the sobering, the significant.)
Thank you for an insightful
Thank you for an insightful article. Would the paragraph below be more clear with the addition of the word "fleet" added in capitals below? I think I understand that the 10,000 figure is the "denominator" to the 5,114 "numerator." Is that correct?
"Put another way, they are numerators in search of denominators. It’s great that 3 million cell phones were collected for reuse or recycling, but how many cell phones did AT&T ship? Nice that 50.1 million pounds of scrap was kept out of landfill, but how much scrap, in total, did the company generate? 5,114 alternative-fuel vehicles sounds like a lot, but I’d be even more impressed if AT&T had a total FLEET of 10,000. If it has 100,000, or 300,000, I’m a lot less impressed.
Thank you for an insightful
Thank you for an insightful article. Would the paragraph below be more clear with the addition of the word "fleet" added in capitals below? I think I understand that the 10,000 figure is the "denominator" to the 5,114 "numerator." Is that correct?
"Put another way, they are numerators in search of denominators. It’s great that 3 million cell phones were collected for reuse or recycling, but how many cell phones did AT&T ship? Nice that 50.1 million pounds of scrap was kept out of landfill, but how much scrap, in total, did the company generate? 5,114 alternative-fuel vehicles sounds like a lot, but I’d be even more impressed if AT&T had a total FLEET of 10,000. If it has 100,000, or 300,000, I’m a lot less impressed.