2007 Volume 58 Issue 4 Pages 288-298
In corporate activities, the reduction of environmental burden has become an important issue. Accordingly, there is tremendous effort made to disclose corporate emission data in environmental reports. According to a questionnaire survey conducted by the Japanese Ministry of Environment in fiscal year 2003, 38.7% of the companies listed published environmental reports. In the investigation in 2005, 47.0% of the companies listed made reports, so it can be pointed out that the ratio of enterprises making environmental reports is increasing. Based on the above, this study proposes an evaluation technique of environmental performance which realizes inter-company comparisons. This technique uses an integrative technique of environmental burden which translates the emission amounts of two or more environmental burden substances, to a single measurement. When existing integrative technique is considered in terms of external evaluation, these techniques assume that all of the necessary data for calculations are disclosed. However, today's disclosure level is not sufficient for the evaluation to work properly. This method imposes estimated emissions including penalties for those companies with undisclosed emission data. The penalty is calculated for each substance using a nondisclosure emission penalty factor. This enables external evaluation with the current disclosure level, and provides disclosure incentives to the enterprises that disclose emission data. In addition, this technique defines the organization boundaries and business scope of emission data, and compensates each company's size in its industry. Therefore, it can compare enterprises of different types and among different industries as well.
