Impact Assessment and Intensity Metrics - Sustainability for the Food Sciences - page 100

diagram and a bar chart with scales that range between 0 and 7, where 7 represents the ideal
best practices (Cobb et al., 2009).
LOHAS index ™
From the corporate point of view, it is not only important to do things with corporate
responsibility, but also to make sure that the public perceives said efforts. In 2007, the Natural
Marketing Institute (NMI) released a ranking of the most environmental and socially
responsible companies in the United States based on the LOHAS Index ™ . According to NMI
about 23 percent of the population in the United States belongs to the LOHAS group that is an
acronym for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (French and Rogers, 2005). The LOHAS
Index ™ is based on both consumers' perception of companies' sustainability practices, and
financial data that support corporate sustainability and responsibility (NMI, 2007).
The companies picked for this index are selected from the Russell 3000 ® Index that consists
of the three thousand of the largest publicly traded companies in the United States. Data of
consumers' perception of corporate responsibility, obtained from the NMI's LOHAS Consumer
Trends Database, is paired with financial data that has been analyzed by KLD Research &
Analytics, a leader in social responsibility investment. Using proprietary modeling, a ranking is
then generated with the top fifty companies comprising the LOHAS Index ™ . Companies rank-
ing at the top of the list are generally making both a good effort in term of creating sustainabil-
ity and communicating them to the customers. Those in the bottom of the ranking are either not
making enough effort in the area of sustainability or not communicating effectively (NMI, n.d.).
From a company's point of view, the LOHAS Index ™ is a tool that helps to understand if their
efforts in the area of sustainability are adequate, if they are communicating the effort effectively,
or they are causing a “greening effect” by overcommunicating it (NMI, n.d.).
Wall Street indexes
What in this section is broadly called Wall Street Indexes are indexes that track the financial
performance of companies with sustainability initiatives. Certainly the most well-known
indexes are the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) that contain a global, European, and
North American set of indexes. Each index consists of a broad composite index and a narrower
subset of indexes that excludes companies generating revenue from alcohol, tobacco,
gambling, armaments and firearms, or adult entertainment (DJSI, 2008).
Other indexes available to investors seeking to integrate environmental, social, and
governance criteria into their investment strategies are KLD Large Cap Social SM Index (LCSI),
KLD Mid Cap Social SM Index (MCSI), and KLD Small Cap Social SM Index (SCSI). These
indexes are done by KLD Research & Analytics, Inc., and can be found at http://www.kld.
com/indexes/index.html.
SUMMARY
The reduction of the environmental impact of products, processes, or services requires the
evaluation of their environmental performance. LCA is the most popular tool that allows the
evaluation of the environmental impact at each stage of the production of food from the farm
through processing, distribution, and consumption—a cradle-to-grave approach. LCA can be
conducted using different methodologies, but the most often followed is the one proposed by
the ISO norms 14040:2006 and 14044:2006.
Some companies have developed their own environmental assessment tools. For example,
BASF has created the Eco-Efficiency Analysis and SC Johnson, the GreenList ™ process.