Scientific Certification Systems, Inc.

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The population explosion in urban centers around the world is a manifestation of two trends – the staggering rise in global population, and the simultaneous loss of economic opportunity in rural areas.

With populations of 10-15 million, many cities have already surpassed their natural carrying capacities, with air now routinely unhealthy to breathe, water unfit to drink, sewer systems overwhelmed by human wastes, and oppressive traffic congestion and noise pollution. During the next two decades, Tokyo, with its dubious distinction of being the first metropolitan center with more than 20 million people, will be joined by half a dozen other cities, including Bombay, Lagos, Shanghia, Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Karachi and Beijing. For hundreds of millions of people around the world, the immediate concern – the only concern – is daily survival.

A steady course toward sustainable development must therefore encompass strategies that simultaneously address the issues of population growth and the consumption and degradation of resources. The focus on "sustainable cities" is, fundamentally, a recognition of the urgent need to strike a balance between humans and our environment- not only locally, but regionally and globally as well. This balance depends, in large part, on the degree to which individuals can be convinced of the need to take personal responsibility for their actions, and are in fact empowered to do so.

Providing Incentives for Individuals to Take Personal Responsibility

Operating as a neutral third-party certification organization, Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) has been working for the past decade on programs designed to help consumers, business managers, and government policy setters make better educated decisions by putting crucial environmental information into their hands. These programs have spanned a wide cross-section of the economy, including agricultural production, resource extraction industries, the energy industry, household and consumer products manufacturers, and the home improvement and construction sectors.

One of the most significant outgrowths of these efforts has been the birth of a whole new system for educating people from all walks of life about the environmental impacts of their decisions - whether it is the car they drive, the clothes they wear, the food they eat, or the number of children they have - and providing guidance in the development of environmental improvement strategies matched to the individual's specific needs and lifestyle. This system, called the Personal Eco-Profile, is designed to empower individuals by providing continuous quantitative feedback about the environmental benefits of their ongoing improvement efforts.

On a community-wide basis, the Personal Eco-Profile can be used to add up the environmental savings achieved by the community. Not only can this help demonstrate the effectiveness of coordinated voluntary efforts as a supplement to on-going local or regional policies to promote sustainable development goals, but it can also provide policy-makers and civic leaders with a valuable measuring stick for validating and extending selected environmental policy initiatives.

The Personal Eco-Profile uses state-of-the-art environmental assessment technology, "life-cycle assessment," to measure the total environmental impacts of the products and services an individual uses - from the extraction of resources through manufacturing, distribution, use, and ultimately, disposal. As a result, it takes into account both direct and indirect impacts on the environment. The program taps directly into a life-cycle database built on 30 years of environmental research by government agencies, industry, and academic institutions, and containing site-specific data for thousands of industrial processes.

Specifically, the program is designed to create incentives for individual action by:

• Providing Personalized Feedback
  Individuals use products and services differently, resulting in different impacts on the environment. For example, the fuel efficiency of the same car can vary widely, depending on who does the driving. Impacts from using a washing machine are determined not only by whether the person uses hot or cold water, but whether the machine is front-loading or top-loading, the type and amount of detergents used, etc. The Personal Eco-Profile is the first such program to quantitatively account for these individual differences.
  
  
• Ranking an Individual's Eco-Profile Against Others
  By comparing an individual's eco-profile to friends, colleagues, classmates, and citizens of other city or country, the program generates a sense of relative performance that can serve as a powerful incentive to action.
  
  
• Enabling Individuals to Test Improvement Strategies
  Individuals can test out the environmental benefits of various improvement options before spending the time or money to actually implement such strategies.
  
  
• Demonstrating Cost Savings Associated with Specific Environmental Improvements
  As individuals implement improvement strategies, it will be possible to calculate the associated cost savings - demonstrating that sound environmental decisions can have financial rewards as well.
  
  
• Calculating Collective Improvements
  Households, community organizations, and other groups can tally their collective improvements, an important step in showing how quickly individual actions can add up to significant environmental savings.
  
  
• Reflecting Region-Specific Impacts
  The Personal Eco-Profile calculations take regional variables into account, such as differences in the electricity grid from region to region, differences in smog levels, differences in fresh water availability, etc. Improvement strategies and individual action plans can be built to respond to these regional priorities.
  
  

Helping Cities Achieve Sustainable Development Goals

Cities pursuing sustainable development goals can benefit from the program in a number of ways. First, the Personal Eco-Profile's cradle-to-grave feedback gives city officials and program managers valuable data with which to assess the environmental effectiveness of various policy options - from transportation to education to the delivery of power and water to residents. Such data can be used to facilitate continuing efforts to most effectively allocate city resources.

The Personal Eco-Profile also enables city planners to determine the range of environmental performance for individuals within the community, and to determine which activities contribute most to specific environmental impacts. For example, individual responses will provide feedback on a community's response to local efforts to promote carpooling, bicycle commuting, mass transit, and other alternative transportation options.

Once such benchmarks are established, it becomes possible to quantify behavior changes and the benefits that such changes have on reducing environmental impacts. As city residents put energy saving strategies into action, for instance, municipal utility companies will be able to monitor the impact on overall electricity demand during peak and non-peak hours.

Finally, the Personal Eco-Profile serves as an added tool by which to educate the community at large about the environmental consequences of everyday decisions and actions. This tool can be made accessible by computer in libraries and other public access venues, as well as through formal classroom curricula.

SCS is now working with cities on three continents on Personal Eco-Profile related projects.

Role of the Business Community

In addition, the business community is playing an active role in the development of the Personal Eco-Profile system. For instance, as products such as computers, washing machines, and automobiles are designed to be more efficient, using less energy, water, and other resources, companies have begun to recognize that the Personal Eco-Profile will demonstrate the value of replacing old, outdated products with newer products. Many manufacturers are therefore taking measures to register the eco-profiles of their products with the system. In addition to helping individuals choose products that lower their environmental impacts, this business participation will also help cities in their efforts to administer responsible "green" procurement programs.

Retailers, utilities and other service-oriented companies, meanwhile, see the tie-in that the Personal Eco-Profile offers to programs they have already begun to offer their customers. For example, home improvement retailers and electric utilities which provide home energy audits and other specialized services are now linking up to the program to act as local resources for people who have had their eco-profiles calculated.

Finally, companies from a variety of industries are providing invaluable stakeholder review of the system as it unrolls, ensuring that both the questions asked and the data used to calculate results reflect the best available published information.

Harnessing Market Forces

Environmental protection has long been dominated by command and control strategies and regulatory approaches. As a strategy for the 21st century, the concept of sustainable development is staking out new ground. Its success will depend ultimately on the freedom and ability of individuals to make informed choices, weighing environmental considerations along with other factors.

The Personal Eco-Profile and other emerging tools offer new opportunities to stimulate the marketplace in ways that designed to make cities more livable and the planet more sustainable.

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