Proposed Light-Weigth Composite Environmental Performance Indicators (LWC-EPI) Mode

Abstract

Rapid environmental changes have necessitated a closer and more critical review of current environmental policies. Moreover, the role of current environmental management information systems (EMIS) in providing organisations with the information enabling them to assess the current impact of their processes and operations on the environment has been given more prominence. With organisations assessed against the norm of regulations followed, meeting them is essential to their business continuity. However, in light of a myopic tendency to focus on short- to mediumterm objectives within organisations, environmental issues are usually not given full attention. In this regard, recommendation- or dashboard-like systems are useful to increase the awareness of management as to the impact of their decisions on the environment on a more frequent and cost-effective basis. This said much research remains to be done in light of the surprisingly vague environmental indicators in existence and our research aims to develop these measures further. Focusing on the growing importance and needs of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for EMISs, and taking into consideration alternative but relatively expensive available software solutions, this paper sheds light on the information provision role of EMISs as to the impact of SMEs operations on the environment. It further tries to identify areas of improvement in the organisations’ endeavor to meet acceptable and nonstifling regulations. Furthermore, the paper makes a first attempt in proposing a model for an easy Light-Weight Composite EPI tool. Our main objective is to provide dashboard-type solutions to control and monitor the EPI’s in an organisation, which may lead to reduce the gap between estimated values and current running values for environment on a more frequent basis than a mere yearly review. Among the measures that can be considered, our focus is on the Co2 emission or disposal of wasted material, detrimental to the environment. Based on the EPIs, company strategies can be better aligned to deploy corrective actions aimed at reducing the above mentioned emissions, including for example up-to-date data about greenhouse gas (referred as to GHG, hereafter) on dashboard-like systems which can be easily monitored and controlled.