Methodology
The researchers worked with three senior members of staff at Wastesavers to develop the indicators. The first stage of the process was a review of existing sustainability indicator sets and sustainability tools, which were summarised and presented to the enterprise as a means of learning more about the nature of sustainability indicators and their suitability for the company. The enterprise was then presented with a set of questions that were designed to clarify:
- Why the company wanted to develop Sustainability Indicators.
- What the company wanted to achieve.
- The feasibility of developing and maintaining the indicator set over coming years.
- The scope of the work; and
- The prospective audience of the Sustainability Indicators set.
In the second stage of the process the set of Sustainability Indicators was developed. Initially, a list of potential indicators was constructed covering economic, social and environmental aspects of the enterprises’ operations and through a process of discussion and elimination, this list was narrowed down to eight key indicators using the following criteria:
- What did the enterprise feel were the most important aspects to cover?
- Which indicators would give the fullest and most accurate picture of the enterprise?
- What information would stakeholders expect to be presented?
- The current availability of information for each indicator.
- Time and personnel resource constraints.
The indicators were developed with consideration to current data, time and resource availability. Therefore, the suggested indicators were intended only as a first step (or a pilot study) towards the development of a full evaluation of the sustainability performance of the enterprise. Where necessary, suggestions were made about future developments. Once the indicators had been established, they were refined and information requirements identified, and then the third stage of the process involved the collection and collation of relevant data.
Data collection tasks were assigned to various members of staff who were best placed to access the required information. When this had been collected, the researchers worked with Wastesavers to draw out and collate the most relevant data and apply it to each indicator. The final stage of the process will be to report on each of the indicators to two key audiences, external partners and funders, and Wastesavers employees.
