Greening the Service Industries: A Case Study of a United States Engineering Consulting Firm

The shift towards service based economic growth in developed countries is typically viewed positively with respect to environmental impact. Research in the past decade, however, has shown that service industries actually account for a large portion of environmental loadings in terms of emissions and energy use. Recently, more research has focused upon the development of tools and methods to properly assess the impacts of service industries. This paper discusses the environmental and economic performance of one service based company, a civil engineering consulting firm. This analysis employed a hybrid-based life cycle assessment (LCA) model to analyze the impacts of the aforementioned case study firm. The evaluation also included an energy audit, waste audit, and a personnel survey. This paper primarily focuses on the findings and results of the energy and waste audits, the survey, and the LCA as well as programs and initiatives that came as a result of the study. The findings point to both the difficulty and the importance of improving staff awareness of the environmental impacts associated with their work habits.