Monitoring our progress toward sustainability - Desirable or undesirable?

The paper industry must move forward to incorporate the concept of sustainability into its normal business practices. The paper industry is in a much more advantageous position to adopt this concept than other heavy industry. To aid in moving in this direction the industry should encourage corporate environmental reports based on PERI guidelines. To help document where the industry is on implementing sustainability, a database has been developed which benchmarks key environmental parameters. This will be useful in giving mills quantitative targets to attempt to achieve. To monitor progress on a continuing basis, a single-number index has been developed and applied to ten mills to assess its validity. It reflects in a single parameter how well the given installation is progressing toward achieving environmental sustainability. The pros and cons of this concept are discussed.