Authors
Quell, Antonia; Scholz, Richard; Forin, Silvia
Abstract
Data collection for upstream materials and processes is often the most time-intensive task when performing company-wide sustainability analyses. It is therefore helpful for practitioners to build upon databases that are already in place at the company level and source inventory data through a virtual interface. Our newly developed online tool addresses this challenge by taking monetary procurement data as starting point and feeding it into an environmentally extended multi-regional input-output model, based on the WIOD(1) and EORA(2) databases. We consider the three domains of sustainability in a cradle-to-gate assessment. Tool output provides results disaggregated by upstream tier and allocates impacts to the countries and sectors where they arise. Thereby, we take 188 countries and 57 sectors into account. The tool encompasses economic (e.g., GDP contribution, job creation), environmental (e.g., GHG, waste, water consumption and pollution), and social (e.g., child labor, living wages) aspects for a total of 74 ‘inventory-level’ indicators. For the non-monetary (social and environmental) indicators, the monetization factors under development within the Value Balancing Alliance framework(3) will be included into the final version of the tool. This results in both, footprints with negative effects and handprints with positive effects (e.g., employee training, job creation). Through the monetization of impacts, indicator-specific results can be aggregated to a single-score output. We would appreciate the opportunity to share with you our modelling approach and receive practitioner’s feedback during the pilot phase of our procurement tool. 1 http://www.wiod.org/database/wiots16 2 https://www.worldmrio.com/ 3 https://www.value-balancing.com/