Eco-Factors for International Company Environmental Management Systems

Liselotte Schebek, Andrea Gassmann, Elisabeth Nunweiler, Steffen Wellge and Moritz Werthen
Additional contact information
Liselotte Schebek: Material Flow Management and Resource Economy, Institute IWAR, Technical University of Darmstadt, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany
Andrea Gassmann: Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS, 63755 Alzenau, Germany
Elisabeth Nunweiler: Volkswagen Group Production Environmental Affairs, 38436 Wolfsburg, Germany
Steffen Wellge: Volkswagen Group Production Environmental Affairs, 38436 Wolfsburg, Germany
Moritz Werthen: Volkswagen Group Production Environmental Affairs, 38436 Wolfsburg, Germany

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 24, 1-19

Abstract: Environmental management systems (EMS) require the assessment of environmental aspects to ensure that organizations recognize their most relevant impacts on the environment. The ecological scarcity method (ESM) provides weighting factors for environmental flows (pollutants and resources), called eco-factors (EF), applicable in the assessment of environmental aspects. EF are based on a distance-to-target approach, displaying the ratio of the current state to the respective policy targets for environmental flows. The ESM has been developed for Switzerland; however, for site-specific application beyond Switzerland, national EF are desirable. This publication presents a systematic procedure for the derivation of EF in an international framework, based on the investigation of eight countries worldwide and comprehensive data research. As a novel feature, the grouping of EF into sets is introduced, according to the character of the underlying policy target: legally based, intended policy, or expert recommendation. Overall, 134 EF for six environmental issues were calculated and applied in a case study from Volkswagen AG. An in-depth analysis identifies the differences between national EF and between sets of EF and discusses the implications for EMS. From the findings, general conclusions for future development and the application of EF in an international context of company management are derived.

Keywords: environmental scarcity method; eco-factors; environmental management systems; environmental aspects; weighting; policy targets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/24/13897/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/24/13897/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:24:p:13897-:d:703570

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().