Publications: Industry

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Title

Assessing the sustainability performances of industries

Author(s)

Labuschange C., Brent, A.C. Brent and Erck R P.G.

Details

Summary

The paper discusses a framework to assess the sustainability performances of a company and its operational activities. A comprehensive framework is proposed that can be used to assess the sustainability of projects, technologies, as well as the overall company sustainability. This framework is based on published approaches and impact assessment guidelines and particularly designed towards the industry in South Africa. This framework is more suitable for the process industry and can be used to establish the sustainability of products and projects.

An extensive survey was undertaken in the South African process industry to establish the respective weighting values and subsequent relative importance of the different criteria in the proposed framework for overall sustainability performance. Social sustainability in particular had internal and external focuses. The internal focus was related to the health and well being of the employees, equity and human rights. The external focus concerned the impacts of the operational initiative on three different levels of society, local community, regional and national level. Stakeholder participation is also a social sustainability criterion with most of the frameworks or guidelines developed with a business perspective. A specific set of indicators was also next to be developed for the criteria in the framework that is appropriate for the intended application of project management in a specific company.