It’s time to have a look at the most trending sustainability buzzwords again. In Worldfavor’s annually updated Buzzword Guide you can find an entire glossary of acronyms and trending words that all sustainability-minded professionals should grasp if they want to be taken seriously.
In this blog post we've gathered a selection of words that might come in handy when you’re talking about minimizing your organization's environmental and social footprint.
Carbon footprint
Greenhouse gas emissions for an activity or of an organization over a given period of time calculated in carbon equivalent.
Closed loop
Closed Loop The most sustainable economic system, where the inputs used to create a product are the same as its end-of-life outputs. It is a zero waste system that completely reuses, recycles or composts all materials. When a company says it uses a closed loop system, it’s referring to its supply chain. Under a closed-loop system, businesses reuse the same materials over and over again to create new products for purchase. It’s a way to conserve natural resources and divert waste from the landfill, and increasingly, more companies are adopting it.
Further reading: Closing the Loop: 6 Essential Steps for Implementing a Circular Economy
Environmental management systems
Environmental Management Systems, or EMS are sets of processes and practices that enable an organization to measure and ultimately reduce its environmental impacts. The most commonly used framework is the one developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for the ISO 14001 standard.
Integrated reporting
Integrated Reporting A new approach to corporate reporting that integrates financial information and non-financial (environmental and social) information into a single document to show how a company is performing. The International Integrated Reporting Framework is used to accelerate the adoption of integrated reporting across the world.
Further reading: International IR Framework
Net positive
Net positive simply means putting more back into the environment or society than you take out. It aims to restore or regenerate ecological systems, which is different from eco-efficiency, which simply slows down the decline in ecological capital, and closed-loop systems, which only prevent further ecological decline.
Further reading: A Seven Step Guide to Net Positive
Scope 3 emissions
Scope 3 emissions are Indirect emissions that occur in the supply chain, including upstream and downstream operations, meaning activities that happen before and after the company is in possession of a product they sell E.g. Total waste disposal resulting from production. Scope 3 emissions are often seen as more complicated to calculate than scope 1 and 2, which are direct or indirect emissions resulting from internal operations or production, like fuels for company owned vehicles or purchased energy.
Further reading: Carbon Trust - What are scope 3 emissions
Download the Worldfavor guide for Sustainability Abbreviations, Acronyms and Buzzwords and keep all the essential sustainability lingo close at hand at all times!
Related blogs you might like:
- Closing the Loop: 6 Essential Steps for Implementing a Circular Economy
- How Greenwashing Can be Avoided Through Transparency
- 7 Social Frameworks To Know
