A key concept of sustainability is commonly referred to as "eco-efficiency." Basically, this concept reflects the uses, losses and operational risks associated with the various resources used in producing products and services. Energy, water and materials represent three resources included in eco-efficiency. The use of these resources is viewed as the depletion of resources within the confines of an environmental management system. They are viewed as sources of exposure and the resultant hazards in an occupational health and safety management system. The loss of resources creates impacts on the environment and poses risks to the workers and the community.

Every organization must first consider its contribution to the conservation of global resource base and efforts to reduce its resource intensity. At the same time, it can improve the economy and provide relief to social issues associated with the life cycle of these resources. The operations manager (and others interested in the financial condition of the organization and its community) must track resource consumption internally. This provides the foundation for monitoring resource productivity and tracking resource flows throughout the life cycle of the product or service. Few companies track resource intensity well enough for this purpose. With the growing popularity of carbon and water footprints, some companies are beginning to close in on this parameter. They will now need to include materials in the footprint. Some new sustainable product standards issued by the American National Standards Institute are creating awareness of this need.

Energy and water often come into a process embedded in the materials. The ethanol fuels that are being developed from corn have very high levels of embedded water. It is often said that electricity from nuclear plants has little greenhouse gas emissions. However, the enrichment of the uranium used to fuel the plants has a very high embedded energy associated with it. You have to look elsewhere in the life cycle to find the energy and water that is used to produce the materials you are using.

If you take a process focus to resource productivity, it is useful to employ hierarchical process maps to track resource use and loss to the activities in the process. Each activity uses and loses resources. The throughput materials (i.e., leading to the product) contain embedded energy and water. The product may have more or less embedded energy and water. Using resource accounting sheets, it is possible to create a single footprint of all resources used and lost in the process. Don't forget that many steps in the process have supporting processes (e.g., compressed air, cleaning, maintenance, etc.) that add to the resource intensity of the process. It is possible to prioritize the resource productivity opportunities by using a resource intensity factor or by looking at the risks posed to the operation by the use and loss of resources. This is very much like the determination of significant aspects in ISO 14001.

At this point, you can use an integrated management system to determine the goals (objectives and targets) of the resource productivity effort and then decide on projects (program) that will be used to improve the resource productivity. Some of the energy geeks insist that normal management systems are not adequate for this purpose. They want you to use a special energy management system standard known as ANSI MSE 2000. While the standard has some specific considerations specific to energy use, it does not make a lot of sense to operate energy management separately from resource productivity management with an integrated management system.

With all of the focus on the drama associated with the world economic crisis, one would think that companies would welcome an opportunity to improve on their resource productivity. Contrary to popular thought, it often does not require capital expenditures to improve resource productivity with existing processes. However, it does require that company to spend time looking for the opportunities and prioritizing them carefully. This effort is normally part of the planning process associated with a management systems "plan-do-check-act" cycle. Unfortunately, most companies creating a footprint restrict it to materials and do not create the footprint in a systematic fashion. They use, of all things, brainstorming techniques. Supporting processes are often ignored. There is an emphasis placed on losses (emissions, discharges, and wastes) rather than looking at both uses and losses. Rarely are embedded resources included.

Even while it does take a concerted effort to create a detailed and integrated resource footprint, the effort to do so will pay for itself in days with the quick wins that will be spotted along the way. Many of the opportunities will come from interviews with employees. However, the real gains will come from the more difficult resource productivity projects that will be identified in the risk management screening. Setting the goals and working to attain the resource productivity is the very "fuel" that a sustainability management system runs on! It is also the basis for the continual improvement that will maintain the organization on its journey to sustainability.

Robert B. Pojasek, Ph.D., is the practice leader for Business Sustainability at First Environment Inc. and an internationally recognized authority on the topic of business sustainability and process improvement.