Life-Cycle Analysis and Metrics
In the fifth part of our series with Andy Last, we discuss the elements of life-cycle analysis and metrics and how to standardise reporting.
Giles: A particular interest of mine with greenwashing has to do with elements like life cycle analysis and metrics and ways that we try and define exactly what the company’s impacts are, which then become the basis of the green marketing, if you wanted a better word that they might want to push out there. But clearly there’s a big issue in terms of lack of standardization and I’ve come across many companies who mysteriously have an analysis written by a University which tells us that their company is doing the best at everything, and then remarkably, their competitor has another analysis by another University and mysteriously they’re doing tremendously as well. I don’t know if there’s anything you might want to mention about trying to standardize these bottom lines to enable a level playing field.
Andy Last: Yep, it’s a definite need. In the early part of the 20th century, there were very different accountancy standards and there was pressure for them to be to have a sort of commonality and the different industries were pushing back against that so you can’t possibly judge the way you look at the accountancy and the financial performance of a services firm compared to a manufacturer, you’re comparing apples with pears, we can’t have the same thing. And then the Wall Street Crash happened and there was standardization pretty damn quickly after that of accountancy. It was clearly recognized that you didn’t have proper visibility unless you had a standard common agree to exactly as you described. We will have to get there with sustainability and those sort of measures, and there is movement towards that. I think that the increasing move towards integrate reporting is a move in that direction. It isn’t moving as fast as some of the sort of dark green organizations would want, but it is a move in the right direction. We have to get to standardized reporting and it will get there, we’re just in a slightly frustrating time, I think, before we do get there, your point about lifecycle analysis is incredibly well made as well, where a company says we’re sort of 100% recyclable in our manufacturing, but if 90% of your impacts are further down the line in consumer usage, for example, then that’s almost an irrelevant number.
Giles: It’s fascinating isn’t it? There’s very many different ways of spinning this kind of stuff.