Procter & Gamble has partnered with the EPA to launch an ambitious research study to analyze and improve sustainability metrics. The five-year project is designed to create a scientific framework for quantitatively examining the sustainability of the company’s tissue and towel division. P&G, like many other companies, has been accumulating a wealth of data but a lot of it sits in discrete blocks and is not yet able to be integrated in a way that can be practically used to make supply chain decisions. Purchasers also typically rely on scorecards to evaluate a potential supplier, but find the wealth of data in those scorecards lacking. The new study will look beyond the information on those scorecards and attempt to develop a methodology that takes into a supplier’s own entire supply chain, as well as other factors. Says Annie Weisbrod, Ph.D., a principal scientist at P&G, via GreenBiz:

“We’re hoping this study will help us figure out how to link them and add more metrics to include the social, labor and cost economics metrics....We’ve made lots of operational improvements and we’re designing products with sustainable innovation in mind, but now we want to go to the next level."

The EPA hopes the study will yield a methodology that can be used to encourage other companies to think more systematically about sustainability.

[T]he EPA had made sustainability and rigorous study top priorities since 2010. At the time, Paul Anastas, Ph.D., was the EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Research and Development. According to Young, Anastas set the tone for research within the agency by declaring that companies and other organizations need to take a more systematic approach to complex problems about sustainability instead of relying solely on simple forms of gathering data such as scorecards. ... There aren’t any plans for the EPA to add other companies to this research study or pursue anything similar with other corporations. However, over the course of the study, the two parties involved will share publicly some of the results they accumulate and synthesize, noted Young. He cautioned not to expect any announcements before next summer.

The goal of the study, however, is not necessarily to develop new tools per se for measuring sustainability, but to develop a scientific underpinning that can lead others to develop those tools.

“A tool is nice and something we’re working towards, but it’s more important to get that seminal science out there to show people how to think about these problems and solve them on their own,” Young said. “You don’t give someone a fish, you teach them how to fish.”