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为什么透明度需要干预

自从界面发布了1997年最早的公司可持续性报告之一以来,透明度的变化发生了很大变化。(我们很高兴回忆起黄色的香蕉纸封面。)今天,这种公司级别的报告是如此主流,大多数大型公司都会生产CSR竞彩足球app怎么下载报告,可以选择将会计师事务所根据全球标准进行审核的报告,例如全球报告计划

随着最近向产品水平影响透明报告的运动(as discussed in our last column), it would appear that we’ve collectively made great progress. But a skeptic might be inclined to ask, “So what?”

换句话说:我们似乎在保持得分方面越来越好,但是有人知道我们实际在玩什么游戏吗?

如果您同意我们正在玩的游戏是关于将我们的业务转移到可持续道路上的,那么可能是时候重新审视系统思想家Donella Meadows的著名文章,即利用点 - 干预系统的地方(PDF), to assess whether what we are measuring in our reporting has any impact on this game.

Meadows is clear in her essay: She is not suggesting some formulaic, paint-by-numbers approach to change a system; rather, she invites us to think more broadly about the many ways there might be to force systems to change.

She defined “leverage points” as places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. She then proposed a list of 12 places to intervene in a system beginning with least effective (#12 – Constants, Parameters, Numbers) to the most effective (#1 – The power to transcend paradigms).

尽管任何可持续性专家竞彩足球app怎么下载都可以挑选数百(数千名?)的CSR报告公司现在发布的公司,但我们更喜欢选择更接近家的东西:接口在产生一个巨额投资Environmental Product Declaration对于我们到2012年底全球销售的每种产品。对产品透明度的这种实质性承诺是否会真正“将针头”迈向可持续的未来?

EPD可以成为杠杆点吗?

EPDS是标准化的生命周期数据披露工具,通常比喻为食品上的成分清单和营养事实标签,除了您获得有关温室气体排放和用水量的数据,而不是卡路里和饱和脂肪。任何产品都可以拥有EPD,就像任何类型的食物都可以具有营养标签一样。从我们当前的健康流行病来看,问题是在此信息不足以大幅降低肥胖,糖尿病和心脏病。

This is why my first instinct was to say that an EPD as a data disclosure tool might fall into Meadows’ 12th category of parameters and numbers. She suggested that probably 99 percent of our attention goes to parameters (such as how much energy was used or how much pollution was emitted), but they only become powerful leverage points when they change dramatically. Parameters and numbers are the points of least leverage, and parameters and numbers represent the bulk of what is reported in a CSR report or an EPD.

因此,如果是这种情况,我们是否只是在看似“低”的杠杆率上浪费了很多钱,还是像EPD这样的披露工具可以成为干预系统的更有效的地方?

努力走下去Leverage Points列表,有几种有趣的可能性。首先,考虑第六点,“改变信息流的结构”。这与数据无关,而与其传递方式有关:新的反馈循环将信息传递到以前不在的地方,从而激发人们的行为不同。Meadows提醒我们,重要的是要以令人信服的形式恢复缺少反馈。系统中缺少这么多反馈循环的原因是人类倾向于避免对我们自己的决定责任。

So EPDs or CSR reports published regularly to track progress could be tools to drive greater accountability for our impacts,如果这些数据在我们的公司决策过程中到达正确的位置。这为我们提供了定义的指标和增量改进的过程,但仍未定义我们保持得分的游戏。

那将需要我们向上升级以利用第三点:“改变系统的目标。”对于界面,EPD是衡量零任务进展的一种方式,我们承诺消除公司到2020年及以后可能对环境产生的任何负面影响。当我们已故的创始人雷·安德森(Ray Anderson)阅读时,在杠杆点第二,我们的目标发生了这种转变。The Ecology of Commerce并开始将经济视为“环境的全资子公司”。

Defining the game

EPDs help us keep score in our internal Mission Zero game, and rigorous CSR reports could function the same way for the small, but growing number of companies with “North Star” or “Zero Impact” sustainability goals. But this falls short of defining a common game where businesses can actually compete – which is, after all, what we do best.

We see great promise in NGOs like Architecture 2030 creating systems interventions and defining compelling games that can give all of our scorekeeping meaning (and leverage). The recently launched建筑2030产品挑战calls on the global architecture, planning, design and building community to specify, design and manufacture products that will meet a carbon footprint of 30 percent below the product average through 2014 – then incrementally improving this reduction to 50 percent by 2030.

To score this game consistently, building product manufacturers are encouraged to develop ISO-compliant EPDs or third-party-verified life-cycle assessments (LCAs) for their products. Funneling this new data to decision makers in the architecture community changes information flows (Leverage Point Six) and begins to change the goals of the system (Leverage Point Three) as manufacturers compete to hit the 2030 goals.

这是我们中人们承诺如何将经济体系转向可持续性的一个小例子,可以开始将所有被CSR报告或EPD的数字转变为有意义的变化杠杆点。竞彩足球app怎么下载除了生成更透明和可信的可持续性数据外,企业还需要新游戏才能将我们带到我们想要去的地方,这是未来几代人的可持续未来竞彩足球app怎么下载。

And maybe as we bring more players into the game, we will shift a few paradigms, which is when transparency could get really exciting. Let the games begin!

插图Eka Panova通过shutterstock

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