Eco-Factors for International Company Environmental Management Systems

Environmental management systems (EMS) require the assessment of environmental aspectsto ensure that organizations recognize their most relevant impacts on the environment. Theecological scarcity method (ESM) provides weighting factors for environmental flows (pollutantsand resources), called eco-factors (EF), applicable in the assessment of environmental aspects. EFare based on a distance-to-target approach, displaying the ratio of the current state to the respectivepolicy targets for environmental flows. The ESM has been developed for Switzerland; however, forsite-specific application beyond Switzerland, national EF are desirable. This publication presentsa systematic procedure for the derivation of EF in an international framework, based on the investigationof eight countries wo rldwide and comprehensive data research. As a novel feature, thegrouping 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 environmentalissues were calculated and applied in a case study from Volkswagen AG. An in-depth analysisidentifies the differences between national EF and between sets of EF and discusses the implicationsfor EMS. From the findings, general conclusions for future development and the application of EF inan international context of company management are derived.