Lean & Environment Toolkit: Appendix B

Basic Environmental Measures for Lean Enterprises

Introduction
Disclaimer
Basic Environmental Measures
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Introduction

The following facility-level draft of basic environmental measures could help world-class Lean practitioners document:

The cost benefits from integrated approaches to managing/preempting environmental risks and liabilities;
The environmental benefits of life cycle approaches that seek synergies from investments into cleaner technologies and the production of green products/services;
The use of pollution prevention as a tool to a sustainable future by augmenting the Lean system’s capacity through the systematic elimination of environmental hazards and pollution sources; and
The quantities of chemicals, water and energy impacts, and environmental discharges being reduced or eliminated.

These metrics can be incorporated into current manufacturing processes seamlessly as they are directed at the same goals as the business part: waste reduction.

Disclaimer

The draft basic environmental measures below should not be construed as an exhaustive list of environmental performance measures since other investment, efficiency, effectiveness, cost/benefit activities, and behavioral level measures may not be currently measured by this tool. These other facility-level environmental outcome measures may be compelled, however, by environmental management systems that are ISO 14000 compliant. Likewise, other voluntary EPA or state environmental pollution prevention partnerships may compel a level of documentation beyond the one sought by the enclosed performance measurement tool.

EPA’s Lean and Environment Basic Environmental Measures

The basic environmental measures tool below is in part derived from two EPA national voluntary partnership programs—the Green Supplier Network and the National Environmental Performance Track. The measures include priority chemicals that are of particular concern because of their toxicity, persistence in the environment, and/or their potential to bioaccumulate in organisms at higher levels in the food chain.

Many leading enterprises already report the environmental performance measures identified in this table to national and state environmental reporting systems such as the Toxics Release Inventory and voluntary environmental partnership programs.