Eco-efficiency reporting exemplified by case studies

This paper presents current and future trends and requirements for environmental, eco-efficiency and sustainability reporting. Further it defines the concept of eco-efficiency, and describes ways of developing eco-efficiency indicators for production sites and for product chains. Eco-efficiency measures give indications both on economic and on environmental performance. These indicators are then exemplified by results from case studies within Norwegian and European industrial companies. Some of these projects have laid the foundation for environmental accounting and reporting systems in local communities. Eco-efficiency as a tool for measuring the performance along product value chains is demonstrated in the paper. Product oriented eco-efficiency indicators are seen in the context of the international efforts on standardisation of environmental product declarations (EPDs) which are ways to report the environmental performance of products. This is exemplified with cases from furniture production value chains. The presentation focuses further on the concept of corporate social responsibility and on the challenges of how to incorporate this in future sustainability reporting.