You can’t manage what you can’t measure – and you can’t promote your achievements if you don’t know where you started from. The first step in managing your environmental performance is having a system to capture the information so that you have some benchmarks to work with.

For example, if you aim to reduce paper usage in 2009 by 20% compared to 2008, you won’t be able to assess your performance on this objective if you didn’t first record how much paper you used in 2008, and secondly you aren’t monitoring and reporting on your consumption levels during 2009.

The key sources of information for measuring your environmental performance include:

• electricity, gas and water bills
• waste management costs
• vehicle logs
• fuel receipts
• business travel records
• your purchasing records for consumables used within your business, such as office paper etc
• your water and electricity meters – they are excellent sources of information and can be used to monitor progress in between bills!

Measurement tools

There are many different tools available to help businesses monitor their environmental impact, however a simple starting point is to develop a spreadsheet tailored so that it records information you want to monitor and allows you to track performance against the objectives you’ve set for your business.

Some of the available measurement tools include:

Earthcheck - an adaptable tool that assists businesses in the travel and tourism sector to measure, benchmark, report and manage their environmental performance in the core areas of energy consumption, waste production and resource conservation.

Greenhouse Challenge Plus Emissions Calculator - Greenhouse Challenge Plus is an Australian Government program to enable Australian businesses to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There are a range of tools to assist small and medium businesses calculate their greenhouse gas emissions, including an Emissions calculator, Energy audit tools and information sheets on Ways to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions.

NABERS Hotel - The National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) is the industry standard for measuring and benchmarking the environmental performance of existing Australian buildings. NABERS Hotels is a rating system for Hotels which allows you to compare the performance of your hotel to other similar buildings, and is the first step to managing the impact of your hotel on the environment.

Next step: Avoid, reduce, reuse and recycle