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Using Life Cycle Approaches to Enhance the Value of Corporate Environmental Disclosures
Journal
Business Strategy and the Environment
ISSN
0964-4733
ISSN-Digital
1099-0836
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2011-01-22
Author(s)
Kaenzig, Josef
Friot, Damian
Saadé, Myiram
Margni, Manuele
Jolliet, Olivier
DOI
Abstract
As the focus of environmental policy and management shifts from cleaner production at the process level towards greener products as a whole, stakeholders ask for transparency throughout the entire value chain. This article assesses the comprehensiveness and the value of currently reported quantitative environmental disclosures of 97 listed companies from the automotive, banking, pharmaceutical and electronic hardware sectors. Findings indicate that quantitative environmental disclosures have many limitations, including incompleteness and inconsistency regarding corporate activities and sites, and limited internal data coherence. For many sectors, corporate disclosures only cover a very small share of the total environmental burden of products. A stepwise procedure is proposed to verify and improve the quality and completeness of reporting using life cycle approaches. We present simple data quality tests, and we introduce the concept of the environmental infl uence matrix, which provides a solid basis for the identifi cation and prioritization of key performance indicators and areas of action.
Language
English
Keywords
Corporate environmental disclosure; input-output and process-based life cycle assessment (LCA); environmental
performance; environmental reporting; sustainable development
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Wiley
Publisher place
New York
Volume
20
Number
1
Start page
38
End page
54
Pages
17
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
59119