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The aim of
the strategy section is to provide you and your company with examples of strategies on
how and when to use different environmental sustainability tools for
eco-efficiency evaluation.
The word strategy is used in a variety of different contexts.
By strategy in DANTES we mean a guideline on how the methods
and tools described within DANTES, can be used to find requested information
needed for environmentally related decisions, and how the resulting information
is communicated to the decision-makers in an understandable way, see the figure below. A strategy
describes how to handle environmental issues in a company and to reach the
overall environmental goals within the company. In addition, the strategies are
examples of how tools and methods are integrated and practically used within the DANTES companies.
Seeking information and communicating results may be carried out in very
different ways depending on where these activities take place. Accordingly, the DANTES strategies are presented for different types of company functions.
The strategies are divided into five groups based on which function within a
company that benefit from the implementation of the strategy. The functions that
hence are the target groups that can benefit from using the DANTES strategies
are
Research and Development, Marketing,
Supply chain,
Production, and
Environmental support. For example a strategy
about how to communicate a product’s environmental impact describes how an EPD
can be used in market communication. The target group for this strategy could be
environmental support at a company and marketing department if they need to know
how to use environmental information in market communication. Based on the
target group and their identified question, a work procedure is presented
demonstrating an example of a step by step work procedure together with
experiences and recommendations. All published strategies are documented in a
common format consisting of three parts i.e. Background, Working procedure and
Experiences part.
A prerequisite to use or document a
strategy is that the company or organization has decided to work towards
sustainability. The
key to sustainable development, as defined by
The Bruntland Report, is the
coordination and balancing of environmental, social and economic issues, the
so-called three pillars of sustainability. Even though DANTES is focused on the environmental
pillar and
development of general corporate strategies, social or
financial sustainability issues are outside the scope, the resulting strategies for environmental sustainability are possible
to combine with strategies for economic and social sustainability.
In addition, tools for environmental
assessment can not be used to solve environmental problems but they often
identify the problems and provide information needed for decisions. The
strategies published on this web site aim at providing valuable aid in the
structured work of improving environmental sustainability to companies
and other parties of the European Community.
More information on the strategy concept is
available in the
Manual
on environmental decision making - part 2.
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