Implementation of Environmental and Other Sustainability Goals

Abstract

This course teaches approaches and methods to identify, assess and manage environmental (mainly) and societal (to some extent) aspects in organisations. The course contains an introduction to the global ISO 14001 standard on environmental management, into the concept of ecobalance of organisations, and supply chain management, and a general view on how such approaches fit into a management system.

Objective

Students will learn to - describe key sustainability problems of the current economic system and measuring units. - describe the management system of an organisation and how to develop a sustainability orientation - discuss approaches to measure environmental performance of an organisation, including 'organisational LCA' (Ecobalance) - explain the pros and cons of single score environmental assessment methods - apply life cycle costing - interpret stakeholder relations of an organisation - (if time allows) describe sustainable supply chain management and stakeholder management

Content

- Sustainability problems of the current economic system and its measuring units; - The structure of a management system, and elements to integrate environmental management (ISO 14001) and social management (SA8000), especially into strategy development, planning, controlling and communication; - Sustainability Opportunities and Innovation for companies - The concept of 'continuous Improvement', and its application to environmental management - Life Cycle Costing, as part of Life Cycle Management - environmental performance measurement of an organisation, including 'organisational LCA' (Ecobalance), incl. practical examples of companies - single score environmental assessment methods, with a focus on the 'ecopoints' method - stakeholder management and sustainability oriented communication - an intro into sustainability issues of supply chain management Students will get small homework excercises to apply the course topics and methods issues.

Resources