What is Sustainability Measurement? A Definition

From an environmental standpoint, sustainability measurement is a process and framework for measuring and attributing greenhouse gas (GHG), climate, and environmental impacts and outcomes to an organization’s direct actions and business operations. For example, a clothing & apparel company will measure sustainability metrics around:

1. The material impacts of its supply chain, suppliers, and labor practices - including water, waste, and emissions
2. How its raw materials and products travel from manufacturing to store (or e-commerce factility) to customers (and post-use destinations like recycling, upcycling, or consigment stores) to increase overall sustainabile circularity
3. Individual and community well-being from its operations — which could include indicators like workplace safety, health, and wellness for employees and garment workers, as well as broader trends in local rates of poverty, homelessness, and economic development based on its organizational footprint.

As we can already see in this example, there’s a relationship between:

Sustainability measurement tracks and understands these relationships through data.

In this sense, sustainability measurement is a process that encompasses several components:

If your business manufacturers or sells physical goods and products, your sustainability measurement efforts should also consider your suppliers and the sustainability of their operations. Your ability to educate, engage, influence, and collaborate with suppliers is essential for a full understanding of your organization's sustainability, since a supply chain's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are, on average, 5 to 25 times higher than your direct emissions. For advice on how to work with your supply chain on these initiatives, please see our tips for improving supply chain sustainability and calculating supply chain emissions, or feel free to contact us directly.

Measuring Sustainability at Your Organization

Once you move into measurement, you'll find sustainability's a space with many overlapping frameworks and sustainability reporting standards, which can sometimes make it feel a bit like acronym or alphabet soup. There's Greenhouse Gas Protocol, IRIS, SASB, GRESB, TCFD, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), CDP, HIGG for apparel companies, as well as B Lab's B-Corporation framework.

Generally, for most organizations, the common, global, established accounting unit for sustainability measurement is the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂), and "carbon equivalents" (CO₂e) - the sum of carbon plus all other emissions like methane converted into carbon

Most medium and large companies now practice "carbon accounting," the process of counting up all their carbon and other emissions from operations, and converting it into one total CO₂e number which represents the company's annual carbon budget or emissions footprint. In most cases, your first steps in sustainability measurement should be to map and count all your carbon, typically in tons or metric tons (tonnes) per year.

However, sustainability doesn't just start and end with emissions. There's also biodiversity, water usage, waste, materials, and other environmental considerations that may be material to your business and might also be important to measure.

Below we compare several different sustainability measurement frameworks to help you do just that, as well as offer some measurement guidelines and recommendations.

Sustainability Measurement Frameworks - A Comparison

For organizations that are newer to sustainability or environmental social governance (ESG), existing measurement frameworks can be a helpful way to establish program guidelines, measurement strategy, and focus data collection. In most cases, it's best to start with an existing framework that fits your organizations work, goals, and measurement capacity.

Greenhouse Gas Protocol

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protcol is the gold standard framework for emissions tracking, and a foundational framework for modern carbon accounting. Most organizations measuring their emissions in metric tons of carbon equivalents (tCO₂e) will use Greenhouse Gas Protocol's frameworks, and our own sustainability reporting software at Brightest is based on GHG Protocol's methodology.

GHG Protocol also provides a framework and guidance on an important concept for sustainability measurement and carbon accounting: emissions categorized by scope.

As you already know (or can likely guess), Scope 1 and 2 emissions are easier for companies to measure. Measuring Scope 3 emissions can be incredibly complex, difficult, and data-intensive (that's why we made Brightest).

To have a full, holistic understanding of its GHG footprint, a company needs to measure its upstream, direct, and downstream emissions. This makes carbon (CO₂) and carbon equivalents one of the most important sustainability metrics for any company.

IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards

The IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards come from the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), a new working group within the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation. The ISSB aims to create a global baseline for financial reporting-grade sustainability measurement that meets the needs of CFOs, investors, and regulators.

Initial IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards guidance pulls together sustainability reporting recommendations from TCFD (Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosure), SASB, and GHG Protocol to help companies organize and report material, sustainability-related financial information across:

In this sense, the ISSB's framework sits at the intersection of sustainability measurement and financial accounting. What impact will climate change have on a company's revenue, costs, or profits? What's the company's climate strategy? How is that being measured? Those are the questions ISSB wants CEOs, CFOs, and management teams to answer.

As of May 2022, the ISSB's sustainability measurement and reporting guidelines are still in draft proposal form, so we recommend following the ISSB's progress as they work toward releasing more formal guidance.

B Corporation

The B Corp certification (and measurement framework) is designed for companies looking to make balanced business decisions and investments that weight the impact on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. B Corp's impact framework measures five categories:

1. Governance - corporate structure, control, shareholder rights, shareholder diversity and inclusion (D & I), and distribution of shareholder value to employees
2. Workers - fair and just labor practices, compensation, workplace diversity, employee volunteering, and culture indicators
3. Community - the B Corp's interactions and impact on the broader community
4. Environment - the company's sustainability practices, measurement, and environmental impact and footprint
5. Customers - how customer-centric the company is, how it measures customer success and satisfication, and who the company serves and works with

In the B Corp framework, environmental sustainability is one pillar or measurement area companies are responsible for within a broader whole about the overall social performance (or sustainability) of the business.

While there are some larger B Corps like Danone North America, Eileen Fisher, and Patagonia, generally the B Corp framework is a better fit for mission-driven startups, small businesses, and mid-sized companies who care about balancing profit and purpose, yet don't have large, complex sustainability reporting and measurement infrastructure.

Most B Corps typically staff one to three full-time employees in their social impact team or sustainability department, who then interface cross-organizational with other leaders and stakeholders to implement programs, gather reporting data, and measure environmental performance. At present, B Corp certification and reporting is primarily survey-based.

[Disclaimer: Brightest is in the process of certifying as a B Corp, and also designs and develops software used by other B Corps for social impact operations and measurement. To learn more about the B Corporation Framework, go here.]

IRIS (Impact Reporting and Investment Standards)

IRIS describes itself as a "generally accepted system for measuring, managing, and optimizing impact," primarily based on the United Nation's (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) impact measurement framework.

IRIS+ provides a robust, open-source list of social impact metrics mapped to the UN SDG's, making it a helpful starter resource for non-profits and social enterprises, particularly those engaged in large-scale or international impact work. If you're new to measurement frameworks or looking to adopt a more standards-based approach to measurement, we highly recommend spending some time reading through the IRIS+ resource library and metrics list.

Source: IRIS+

However, one practical challenge with IRIS's measurement and metrics ecosystem is its size and complexity. As of 2019, IRIS suggests 594 different potential impact metrics in its reference set, some releated to sustainability, some focused on very different areas. In most cases, only a few will apply to your organization, and - just as importantly - it's critically important to start with a manageable set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and build out measurement capacity over time. Start with three to five IRIS metrics as your core impact or sustainanbility measurement KPIs, then grow and assess from there.

SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board)

SASB has similarities to IRIS and the B Corp Framework, but with more integrated design of financial accounting standards. As a result, SASB applies what some view as a higher level of "rigor" or precision to social impact and sustainability measurement.

Whereas IRIS+ is sector-specific (Climate, Diversity & Inclusion, Health, Water), SASB segments by industry vertical (Consumer Goods, Food & Beverage, Healthcare, etc.), using 77 different standards. And by comparison to B Corp, SASB is more of a large enterprise framework used for corporate governance, shareholder and ESG reporting, and socially responsible investing (SRI) analysis that includes metrics and components oriented toward sustainability.

If you work at a large corporation, find, download, and familiarize yourself with the SASB standards for your industry - then work with internal and external partners and experts to establish the right measurement and reporting system.

GRI (Global Reporting Initiative)

GRI is based in Amsterdam, and its measurement system, the GRI Standards, is a framework for international sustainability reporting. Similar to SASB, GRI Standards are designed for large global organizations. GRI Standards specifically aim to help support a global common language for non-financial sustainability reporting and disclosures, versus SASB's embrace of more finance-centric social impact reporting.

GRI segments its standards into four categories:

Within GRI's three (3) Universal Standards, GRI asks organizations using its reporting framework to define (and disclose) several foundation aspect of the organization's mission and impact as part of its General Disclosures:

1. Organizational profile - an overview of the organization’s size, geographic location, and activities
2. Impact Strategy - an overview of the organization’s strategy with respect to sustainability and social impact
3. Ethics and Integrity - the organization's defined alues, principles, standards, and norms of behavior
4. Governance - the organization's structure and composition, as well as environmental risk management and policies for evaluating economic, environmental and social performance and decision-making
5. Stakeholder engagement - the organization’s approach to stakeholder alignment and engagement
6. Reporting practice - the organization’s approach to sustainability reporting and measurement

GRI further segments its reporting system into three categories:

An example GRI water reporting standard. Source: GRI and GSSB

GRESB

GRESB, formerly the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark, is primarily a framework for real estate and buildings. For most non-profits and social impact organizations, GRESB won't be relevant, but can be a helpful sub-measurement framework within larger corporate impact and sustainability measurement in cases where the company owns, makes, and/or controls meaningful real estate and infrastructure investments.

In addition to GRESB, there are also other building-based energy standards like LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which focus on energy efficiency and sustainable design quality.

Choosing the Right Sustainability Measurement Direction for Your Organization

In almost every case, we recommend starting small (three to five core KPIs) and identifying the most relevant, existing sustainability measurement framework to serve as reference inspiration (and benchmarking standards) for your ESG, CSR, or environmental strategy.

If you're a startup, start with B Corp. If you're a non-profit, start with IRIS+. When you're counting and categorizing carbon, use GHG Protocol. Only turn to custom sustainability metrics when existing measurement systems clearly don't fit your organization and you have high confidence in your data and measurement capacity.

We wish you all the best as you continue your sustainability measurement work, and if we can be helpful at all (at any step in your process), please get in touch. A central part of our mission and work here at Brightest is enabling better data-driven decision-making (and actions) for good.