Procter & Gamble and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced they’ve begun a collaborative research and development study that could lead to new tools for measuring sustainability objectives. The effort will focus on metrics within corporations’ manufacturing facilities and their supply chains.
The Cincinnati-based consumer products giant is teaming up with researchers at EPA’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) in a five-year study that aims to develop a scientific approach to analyzing and measuring sustainability within its tissue and towel products division, said Annie Weisbrod, Ph.D., a principal scientist at P&G.
The packaged goods company -- with more than 50 brands and manufacturing facilities around the globe -- has been pursuing an ambitious long-term sustainability program. The current agreement with the EPA is expected to help the company move further along in meeting some of that program’s goals, said Weisbrod.
For example, P&G already developed life cycle assessments in its computerized systems and has environmental management tracking systems. P&G would like to link those two systems so the data can be integrated in a way that helps managers make better operations and supply chain decisions, she said.
“We’re hoping this study will help us figure out how to link them and add more metrics to include the social, labor and cost economics metrics,” Weisbrod said. “We’ve made lots of operational improvements and we’re designing products with sustainable innovation in mind, but now we want to go to the next level."
Photo of Procter & Gamble logo provided by Proctor & Gamble
Next page: Behind the EPA's motive to study measurement tools
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Wonderful to see P&G
Wonderful to see P&G exploring a systems approach to metrics! Two systems-level frameworks that could inform the research include:
1. Biomimicry's Life's Principles, a set of principles for sustainability… how life has survived and thrived on earth for 3.85 billion years. Virtually all species use these strategies to "create conditions conducive to life". Biomimicry 3.8 (www.biomimicry.net), along with others, compiled and refined this framework over the past several years. True benchmark for sustainability.
Find it here: http://biomimicry.net/about/biomimicry/lifes-principles/
2. Whole Measures - http://www.measuresofhealth.net/
While the context is different - healthy communities and land - it's a wonderful systems-approach to social measures.
Check them out!