Green Metrics

Green metrics are quantified measures of an organization's environmental impact and performance, and—alongside social and financial information—are important pillars in the broader field of sustainability accounting. Developing the capacity to measure environmental impacts offers benefits in benchmarking performance, offering data against which management can take action, documenting progress over time, evaluating the effectiveness of management initiatives, and optimizing the design of products, processes, and portfolios. Additional commercial benefits have been identified as decreased organizational risk and enhanced stakeholder attractiveness.

While an organization might develop and apply its own green metrics in a private fashion, a number of overarching frameworks have evolved, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the performance guidance offered by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in the ISO 14000 series of environmental ...