Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2015) 1e11

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Journal of Cleaner Production

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Environmental performance indicators: a study on ISO 14001 certied

companies
Lucila M.S. Campos a, *, Daiane Aparecida de Melo Heizen b, Miguel Angel Verdinelli c,
Paulo Augusto Cauchick Miguel a
a
b
c

Federal University of Santa Catarina, Department of Production Engineering and Systems, Campus Trindade, 88.040-900, Florianopolis, SC, Brazil

do Sul, SC, Brazil
Federal Institute of Santa Catarina, Getlio Vargas Avenue, 830, Centro, 89.251-000, Jaragua
Universidade do Vale do Itaja, Uruguay Street, 458, Centro, 88.302-202, Itaja, SC, Brazil

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 3 July 2014
Received in revised form
12 December 2014
Accepted 5 March 2015
Available online xxx

Environmental management system has become one of the main tools used by companies to handle the
environmental aspects and the impacts that their activities have on the environment. In this context, this
work aims to demonstrate the results of a survey that identies a set of indicators of environmental
performance to continuously manage and improve the environmental and performance management of
ISO 14001 certied companies in the Southern region of Brazil. This research is descriptive as well as
quantitative and adopted two methods for factor analysis, the analysis of multiple correspondences and
the principal components analysis as well as a method of classication, the cluster analysis. Several
companies monitor the environmental and performance management of the industrial pulp and paper/
furniture/wood and textile sectors using indicators of environmental performance. As expected, organizations from the services sector do not use such indicators. The results from cluster analysis also
showed that legal and other requirements and environmental aspects are the both more representative
requirements. Finally, there is a great concern for companies to meet the legal requirements as well as
the conservation of environmental resources.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Environmental performance indicators
Environmental management system
EMS
ISO 14001
Survey research

1. Introduction
Since the beginning of the 1980s, environmental concerns have
been incorporated into the strategic and operational decisions
taken by companies. Pollution caused by operation activities is
viewed as an undesirable consequence that is no longer endorsed
by many organizations. While many businesses have traditionally
resisted changes brought about by government legislation and
pressure from the public, many rms, through reluctant adoption
or willing change, have found that a pro-environment stance can
enhance a number of goals (Inman, 2002).
As a consequence, the importance of managing environmental
activities to prevent negative aspects and impacts on the environment has been highlighted. Among the diverse environmental
management practices that rms have implemented in recent years

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: lucila.campos@ufsc.br (L.M.S. Campos), dheinzen@ifsc.edu.br
(D.A. de Melo Heizen), nupad@univali.br (M.A. Verdinelli), paulo.cauchick@ufsc.br
(P.A. Cauchick Miguel).

in this direction (e.g. cleaner production, eco-efciency and life

cycle assessment), the environmental management systems (EMS)
have been the focus of much attention (Campos, 2012).
In the past two decades there have been a number of studies
devoted to EMS and its diffusion. Some research has focused on
motivations for the standard's implementation (Morrow and

lez-Benito and
Rondinelli, 2002; Bansal and Hunter, 2003; Gonza

lez-Benito, 2005; Chan and Wong, 2006; Boiral, 2007;
Gonza
Gavronski et al., 2008; Prajogo et al., 2012), while others have
concentrated on the effects that these systems have on rms'
environmental, operational and nancial performance (Klassen and
McLaughlin, 1996; Melnyk et al., 2003). Studies have also emphasized that improvements in the organization's environmental performance are benecial (Porter and Van der Linde, 1995; Bonifant
and Ratcliff, 1994; Link and Naveh, 2006; Lopez-Gamero et al.,
2010). These benets are not only for the environment but also for
the company's overall performance.
One particular research area that has drawn a lot of attention is
the diffusion of ISO 14001 (To and Lee, 2014). A signicant body of
literature on this research area has been available, offering insights

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.03.019
0959-6526/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Campos, L.M.S., et al., Environmental performance indicators: a study on ISO 14001 certied companies,
Journal of Cleaner Production (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.03.019

L.M.S. Campos et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2015) 1e11

into how ISO 14001 diffuses at the country level (Casadesus et al.,
2008; Delmas, 2002; Lagodimos et al., 2007; Qi et al., 2011;
Trierweiller et al., 2013), regional level (Delmas, 2002), and global
level (Albuquerque et al., 2007; Corbett and Kirsch, 2001; Nishitani,
2010; Viadiu et al., 2006).
A second phase focused in studies devoted to the development
of frameworks and methods to support EMS decision-making,
namely the evaluation and selection of different EMS alternatives.
To this end, different approaches have been proposed, such as
multicriteria techniques (Hui et al., 2001; Petroni, 2001;
Sambasivan and Fei, 2008), hybrid models combining mathematical programming, and other methods (Tsai and Chou, 2009; Celik,
2009). All of them are based on different sets of technical and
economic criteria in order to support decision-making (GuerreroBaena et al., 2014).
Even though research on EMS has an extensive literature, there
is still lack of in-depth investigation of internal dynamics in
maintaining ISO 14001 environmental management system
(Balzarova and Castka, 2008). The deployment of an EMS does not
assure the effectiveness of environmental management (Rondinelli
and Vastag, 2000; Melnyk et al., 2003; Campos, 2012). The
continuous monitoring of critical points of the system is also
necessary, and these points are generally particular to each type of
organization. Some studies (e.g. Poksinska et al., 2003; Balzarova
and Castka, 2008) advocate that indicators of environmental performance are not directly linked to the maintenance of EMS.
However, companies that do not use a set of EMS performance
indicators may not be managing their own environmental system
(Henri and Journeault, 2008; Nawrocka and Parker, 2009). Thus,
they must continuously assess the environmental performance to
assure success either in developed or developing nations.
The academic community has witnessed a strong interest in the
BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa context. This
justies Brazil as focused of the present study. The country is
considered one of the most promising developing nations,
responsible for approximately 30% of Latin America's gross domestic product (GDP). BRICS0 countries in general have been
improving the number of companies certied by ISO 14001 from
1999 until 2010 (ISO, 2010) an, Brazil is the country with the most
companies under the environmental management system ISO
14001 (2004) in Latin America. According to the same database
(ISO, 2010), the number of certications has grown year by year in
the country (from 1999 to 2010). Likewise, the interested in
research related to ISO 14001 diffusion in Brazil has also been
disseminated (Silva and Medeiros, 2004; Oliveira et al., 2010;
Jabbour, 2010, 2013b; Trierweiller et al., 2013; Ferenhof et al.,
2014). By examining the Brazilian scenario, a study conducted by
Silva and Medeiros (2004) also shows that the number of companies adopting environmental practices has increased each year.
Nevertheless, most of these companies have insufcient knowledge
about environmental management systems and do not evaluate
their environmental performance.
In this context, this work aims to demonstrate a set of EMS indicators of performance used by companies certied by ISO 14001
in the Southern region of Brazil. This region was choose because is
one of the most important and industrialized region of this country.
A question is this sense is then proposed: what are the key environmental performance indicators used by companies to manage
their EMS certication according to ISO 14001? To address this
question, this work is organized as follows. Firstly, it provides a
short literature review of environmental management systems and
performance indicators. Secondly, research methods are described.
Thirdly, survey results are presented and discussed and, nally,
some conclusions are drawn and recommendations for future
studies are offered.

2. Theoretical framework
Certied EMS have been highlighted in the literature among the
various practices of environmental management adopted by major
companies over the last years, such as (Link and Naveh, 2006;
Viadiu et al., 2006; Albuquerque et al., 2007): cleaner production,
eco-efciency, and the evaluation of the life cycle of products,
among others. An EMS is part of the management system of an
organization that aims to manage the environmental aspects
related to its activities, products and services (Perotto et al., 2008;
Campos and Melo, 2008). From the normative point of view, ISO
14001 (ISO, 2004) denes an EMS as a set of inter-related elements,
a part of an organization's management system, used to develop
and implement its environmental policy and manage its environmental aspects. Standards and procedures can be used by the organization to put an EMS into operation. The three best-known
standards are the EMAS, the BS 7750 and the ISO 14001 (ISO, 2004).
The BS 7750 was developed in the United Kingdom and published in 1994. It is a certication of British Standard Institute that
presents specications for the development, implementation, and
maintenance of an EMS to ensure and demonstrate conformity
with the statements of the company with regards to its environmental policy, objectives and goals. The BS 7750 served as a basis
for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to
launch the ISO 14001 in 1996. According to British Standard Institute website, since 2004 the BS 7750 was replaced by BS EN ISO
14001: 2004.
The European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme System
(EMAS) was adopted by the European Union Council (EC) in June,
1993. It has been opened to volunteer participation by companies
since April 1995. A new version of this standard was published in
November, 2009 (EC e N 1221/2009 of the European Parliament
and Council). The primary objective of EMAS is to promote the
continuous improvement of the environmental performance of
industrial activities. It also aims to: (i) establish and implement
environmental policies, management programs and organizational
systems; (ii) conduct a periodical evaluation of performance of the
elements that are part of the regulations; and (iii) to inform the
community about the organization's environmental performance.
It allows European Union companies that develop industrial activities to obtain registrations of their units with an EC commission.
An ofcial European Union document containing a list of all
registered units is published annually. A registration is considered a
certicate of good environmental performance for those companies that obtain it.
The ISO 14001 is an international environmental standard that
species requirements related to an EMS to allow the organization
to devise its policy and objectives while considering the legal requirements and information concerning signicant environmental
impacts. A rst version was launched in 1996, and a second one was
launched in 2004 after some changes. Since the launch of the rst
version of the ISO 14001, the number of certied companies in the
world has continuously grown (Bansal and Hunter, 2003; Balzarova
and Castka, 2008).
Despite the EMAS have arisen before, undoubtedly the ISO
14001 gained more notoriety and has become the EMS standard
most worldwide applied. Regarding environmental performance
and different standards (EMAS or ISO 14001), Testa et al. (2014), for
instance, investigated the impacts of EMAS and ISO 14001 on the
reduction of carbonic anhydride emissions on 229 energy intensive
plants in Italy. The results suggested that the implementation of an
environmental management system in energy intensive industries
has a clear inuence on environmental performance both in the
short and in the long term, but a different effect of ISO 14001 and
EMAS on environmental performance occurs.

Please cite this article in press as: Campos, L.M.S., et al., Environmental performance indicators: a study on ISO 14001 certied companies,
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L.M.S. Campos et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2015) 1e11

Until 2012, 285,844 companies were certied in 165 countries

(ISO, 2012). The number of studies that investigated the global
spread of the standard (e.g. Corbett and Kirsch, 2001; Gavronski
et al., 2008; To and Lee, 2014) and the adoption of environmental
management systems in various countries also increased during
this time. These countries included the USA (Babakri et al., 2003),

Slovenia (Selih,
2007), Spain (Rodrguez et al., 2007, 2011), China
(Hui et al., 2001; Zeng et al., 2005; Qi et al., 2011), Germany
(Morrow and Rondinelli, 2002), Australia (Zutshi and Sohal, 2004),


Turkey (Turk, 2009), Brazil (Avila
and Paiva, 2006; Pombo and
Magrini, 2008; Gavronski et al., 2008; Campos, 2012; Trierweiller
et al., 2013), Japan (Nakamura et al., 2001), among others.
Particularly in Brazil, the evolution and interest in EMS subject
have been growing in the past two decades. In a rst phase, the rst
papers were related to a general overview of the system (Silva and
Medeiros, 2004; Pombo and Magrini, 2008), performance results


(Avila
and Paiva, 2006; Oliveira et al., 2010), or motivations and
benets (Gavronski et al., 2008) of the EMS implementation in the
country.
Then in a second phase some concern on the adoption of
environmental practices in ISO 14001 certied companies can be
observe (Oliveira and Pinheiro, 2009; Gavronski et al., 2013; Teles
et al., 2014), the evolution and disclosure of EMS (Jabbour, 2010;
Trierweiller et al., 2013), the use and integration with other management systems (Oliveira, 2013; Jabbour et al., 2014), and link with
tools like lean manufacturing (Jabbour et al., 2013a). Moreover,
some research regarding the relation between EMS and environmental performance can be identied (Campos and Melo, 2008;
Jabbour et al., 2013a, 2014), the EMSs and protability (Ferron
et al., 2012), and if environmental practices is a competitive priority for Brazilian companies (Jabbour et al., 2012).
A strong line of research in Brazil has been the one that deals
with the relationship between environmental management in ISO
14001 certied companies and human resources environmental
training (Jabbour et al., 2008; Jabbour and Santos, 2008a, 2008b;
Teixeira et al., 2012; Jabbour, 2013a, 2013b; Jabbour et al., 2013b).
There has also been a line of studies on the application of EMS in
the context of small and medium-sized companies (Campos, 2012;
Ferenhof et al., 2014).
The reasons for implementing an EMS vary (Campos, 2012).
Most motivations are related to external factors, such as the organization's image, market-related advantages, the demands of the
market and/or customer, or seeking improved stakeholder
communication (Hillary, 2004; Potoski and Prakash, 2004). However, internal factors also are reasons, such as the emergence of
response, improved information ows (Potoski and Prakash, 2004;
Gavronski et al., 2008), employee motivation, waste reduction,
increased
operational
efciency
(Boudouropoulos
and
Arvanitoyannis, 1999) as well as nancial and organizational benets (Hillary, 2004).
Other publications demonstrate the main benets introduced
by the adoption of an EMS: gaining new markets and customers
(Zutshi and Sohal, 2004; Delmas, 2002), improvement in the
quality of organizational management (Lawrence et al., 2002), and
intangible benets, such as (Delmas, 2002; Zutshi and Sohal, 2004):
improved internal and external process communication, employee
motivation, and organizational image.
The certication is a voluntarily process of structured communication that informs a company's stakeholders about its environmental management (Melnyk et al., 2003). In summary, an
organization seeks certication when a company:
 feels compelled to meet the economic demands or when the
change is market-driven;

 possesses a high capacity and the necessary competencies to

obtain the certicate (in other words, the effort would not be
excessive);
 holds adequate knowledge about the standard, the impacts of
their activities (internal and external), and identies certication as a strategic action for the organization.
A number of works have focused their research on the denition, importance, characteristics, objectives or benets of performance measurement indicators (e.g. Adriaanse, 1993; Hronec,
1994; Tunstall, 1994; Hammond et al., 1995; Kaplan and Norton,
2000). Environmental indicators are considered instrumental
concepts that must be added to the objectives of society. Collaborations between academics and practitioners become indispensable in addition to government and institutions in order to analyze
the environmental data and it to propose timely environmental
policies (Daz-Moreno, 1999). Each indicator should be related to a
particular environmental problem (Manteiga, 2000). Thus, the indicator of an environmental system responds to a generic and
entirely social interest e the sustainability of development. The
indicators of environmental performance are directly or indirectly
measured from environmental quality, and they express the performance of the surrounding companies (Tocchetto and Tocchetto,
2004). The authors add that these indicators are used to evaluate
and present the trends of conditions for a given environment. They
also allow for checking the effectiveness of deployed actions and to
compare them with those obtained by competing companies.
The ISO 14031 standard is a conceptual reference to the selection of environmental performance indicators e Environmental
Management e environmental performance evaluation guidelines
e that has been used in Europe since 1999. This standard specifically addresses the guidelines for environmental performance
evaluation and the adoption of indicators; it lists more than 100 of
these guidelines. ISO 14031 (ISO, 2013) describes two general categories of indicators to be considered when evaluating the environmental performance:
 Environmental condition indicators provide data and information about the local, regional, national or global conditions of
environmental quality. The measurements carried out according
to environmental standards and rules established by the legal
standards and devices.
 Environmental performance indicators provide data and information about the organization's environmental performance
and are classied in two types: (i) managerial, which provide
information about the management efforts that positively inuence the environmental performance of the organization as a
whole, and (ii) operational, which provide information related
to the environmental performance on the operation of the
production process.
In this context, the present work was guided by the theoretical
studies of the management and evaluation of environmental performance as well as the types of performance indicators, leading to
the following research questions: what are the key environmental
performance indicators used by companies to manage their EMS
certication according to ISO 14001? In addition, are there similarities between the indicators used by companies in the same industry? To address those questions, next section describes the
research procedures employed in this study.
3. Research methods
The present research can be characterized as descriptive based
on Pinsonneault and Kraemer (1993). It was carried out via

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survey-based research by following guidelines in the literature

(Forza, 2002). The study is considered as an exploratory because
it addresses a subject that is relatively unexplored in the international literature (environmental performance indicators within
the context of ISO 14001 companies). The data were gathered
using a questionnaire sent to a set of companies with an ISO
14001 certication in Southern Brazil (State of Santa Catarina).
The Southern region is the second most industrialized in the
country. The companies are from the State of Santa Catarina,
which is one of the fastest growing industrial territories in the
nation. Another relevant aspect in the investigated context is the
changes of environmental legislation in emerging countries (such
as China and Brazil part of the so-called BRIC - Brazil, Russia,
India, and China), that will affect organizational managers
(Gunasekarana et al., 2014).
The study sample contained 73 organizations, which were
included in the Brazilian National Institute of Standards,
Metrology and Quality (INMETRO), where secondary data were
accessed to retrieve contact data from the organizations. The
companies belonged to different industrial sectors. After contacting the companies, some of them no longer complied with ISO
14001 certication. So, the sample size was reduced to 62
companies.
The survey instrument was a 9-page questionnaire with opened
and closed questions that could be completed in about 20 min.
After constructing the questionnaire considering the literature, the
instrument was pilot-tested. Data were collected by answering it in
online. To gather data, all companies were contacted by telephone
before e-mailing the website link. The response rate was 63% (39
companies), which is an adequate response rate according to Forza
(2002).
For data analysis, a multivariate analysis was applied to analyze
the data with a two-factorial model. The rst used a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) because the scale was semantic in
nature, which inhibited the application of other methods that
require quantitative variables (Hair Jr. et al., 2010). The MCA was
used in all types or categories indicated by the respondents. For
each question, the following options were available: never use,
rarely use, frequently use, and always use.
In the second analysis, some questions related to the requirements of ISO 14001 were selected for further cluster analysis.
A number of environmental indicators adopted by companies to
monitor their EMS was used to analyze the data. Principal components analysis (PCA) was applied to evaluate the relationship
between the variables and the likeness or similarity among companies, as established by Tabachnick and Fidell (2001). For the
cluster analysis, the PCA extracts a number of factors. Five factors
were chosen because they represented 93.94% of the variance. The
clusters were obtained using Ward's joining method (Hair Jr. et al.,
2010), and the Euclidian distance was chosen as measure of
resemblance or similarity allowing for the creation of a
dendrogram.

4. Results and discussion

The results of this study are presented as follows. Firstly, the
prole of the companies is outlined, followed by the performance
indicators checked by the ISO 14001 requirement using the results
of the Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA). Because of the
type of requirements, the indicators may be operational or managerial. Principal Components Analysis and Cluster are secondly
presented. Finally, a correlation among the main groups of companies, predominant industrial sectors, and standard requirements
with key indicators are highlighted.

4.1. Demographics of companies

Twenty industrial sectors registered in a database (RMAI, 2005)
were used to dene the economic sectors. Ten companies from 20
economic sectors answered the questionnaire, as summarized in
Table 1.
The individual who answered the questionnaire was usually the
Management System Coordinator, with the larger number of answers (22). Others included: production managers (06), environmental analysts (05), internal consulting people (03), industrial
engineers (02), and technical assistants (01). Based on the answers,
most respondents (72%) were directly related to the environmental
management department. Moreover, an expressive number of respondents participated in the critical analysis of the environmental
management system (EMS) of the company. It is worth mentioning
that green teams are frequently considered in the state-of-the-art
literature as an essential factor for companies aiming to implement and improve environmental management approaches and
practices (Jabbour et al., 2013b). Therefore, the involvement of the
respondents in the critical analysis and their knowledge of the
environmental management system can be considered as key
points for maintaining the EMS.
Concerning the number of employees, the data collection instrument considered three groups for classication purposes, as
shown in Table 2: small size companies, medium size, and large size
companies. As can be seen in Table 2, the majority of respondents
are medium-sized companies.
The results showed in Table 2 corroborated ndings from other
similar study (Oliveira et al., 2010). Oliveira et al. (2010) veried the
benets and difculties of Environmental Management Systems
~o Paulo, Brazil.
based on ISO 14001 at companies in the state of Sa
Similarly, the major respondents were also medium-sized companies (43,5%).
The origin of most respondents were national (56%), followed by
multinational companies (33%). Companies with mixed capital (8%)
and government companies (3%) were also represented in the
sample. Concerning the ISO 14001 certication, the major part of
the companies was certied between 2001 and 2002, as showed in
Table 3. Oliveira et al. (2010) found a similar result. Their sample
~o Paulo
shows a concentration of certication of companies in Sa
around 2001 and 2003.
The BVQI (Bureau Veritas) stands out as the preferred certifying
body (48%), followed by DNV e Det Norske Veritas (12%). The
BRTV and the ABS Quality Evaluations are the third most popular
certifying body (with 8% of companies).
4.2. Main environmental performance indicators according to
standard requirements
Data analyses have shown that seven requirements stand out for
most companies that always and/or frequently monitor
Table 1
Economic sectors surveyed.
Economic sector

Respondents

Paper and cellulose/furniture/wood

Services
Food
Electric and electronic home appliances
Metallurgy
Tobacco
Textile
Petrochemical
Civil construction
Transport

19%
13%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
8%
5%
5%

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L.M.S. Campos et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2015) 1e11

Table 2
Number of employees in companies.
N of employees

Respondents

Fewer than 100

From 100 to 1000
More than 1000

18%
59%
23%

Table 3
ISO 14001 certication per year (n 62
companies).
Year

Percentage

1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006

5%
10%
13%
20%
18%
15%
10%
3%
5%

environmental performance. These requirements were: 4.3.2. Legal

and other requirements; 4.4.2. Competence, training and awareness; 4.4.7. Emergence, preparedness and response; 4.5.2. Evaluation of compliance; 4.5.3. Non-conformances, corrective and
preventive action; 4.3.1. Environmental aspects; and 4.5.1. Monitoring and measurement.
Companies most often use indicators of the performance requirements that are more directly associated with legal requirements (emergency preparedness and response, assessment of
legal and other requirements and environmental aspects). This
nding is corroborated by Donaire (1994), who argues that the
internalization of environmental variables by companies is the
result of external inuences from the environmental legislation,
and from the pressures demanded by the national and international community, which results in internal repercussions for organizations (Balzarova and Castka, 2008).
Considering the large amount of indicator requirements for ISO
14001 (total of 188), this work emphasizes the key performance

indicators for seven requirements, i.e. those most commonly used

by certied companies and that contribute to effectiveness of the
EMS. Thus, those were further veried. The ve performance indicators for each requirement that had the highest frequency of
always and frequently were then selected. For example, the ten
most commonly used indicators were selected for the 4.3.1.
Environmental Aspects requirement.
The following tables show the main indicators and how to
measure them: Table 4 (4.3.2 Legal and other requirements),
Table 5 (4.4.2 Competence, training and awareness), Table 6 (4.4.7
Emergency preparedness and response), Table 7 (4.5.2 Evaluation
of legal and other requirements), Table 8 (4.5.3 Nonconformity,
Corrective Action and Preventive Action), Table 9 (4.5.1 Monitoring
and Measurement), and Table 10 (4.3.1 Environmental Aspects).
These results are discussed in sequence by considering the size of
companies as well as the economic industrial sectors that stood out
for their use of indicators.
The performance indicators showed in the previous tables is
relevant to be highlighted. Boog and Bizzo (2003) argue that the use
of performance indicators as management tools demonstrates the
effectiveness of the organization to ensure clear operational and
environmental conditions. The demonstration of these conditions
directs the efforts of companies towards preventive environmental
actions and/or corrective ones. Nevertheless, a performance indicator system should be deployed based on the organization's
mission and related to strategies via the identication of critical
success factors of its business. This requirement may be a barrier for
the use of indicators in small businesses (Campos, 2012) because
they are the more systematically used by medium and large
companies.
Finally, the results obtained via the correspondence technique
show that companies in the pulp and paper/furniture/wood, textile,
electrical/electronics and tobacco industries always used the
performance indicators. However, the services sector, petrochemical industry, construction industry and transportation industry do
not use and/or rarely use most of the performance indicators. These
last ndings differ from the previous one if the environmental
impact of companies activities from those sectors were considered.
An unexpected result were from petrochemical companies since
these organizations do not adopt performance indicators. As well-

Table 4
Main performance indicators of requirement 4.3.2.
Environmental-managerial performance indicators

How to assess

Compliance with the legislation

Total of items required by legislation/total number of times that legislation

has not been followed  100
Number of complaints reported regarding the environment
Total of complaints reported to the company regarding the environment
Number of legal non-conformities registered
Total of legal non-conformities registered per year (includes nes, lings,
contaminations)
Legal parameters regarding the discharge of efuents required by legislation
Total of legal parameters (includes DBO, DQO, phosphorus, fecal coliforms,
total coliforms, etc.)
Number of accidents occurred throughout company history
Total of employee accidents throughout company history
Industrial sectors: Civil construction; Tobacco; Paper and Cellulose/Furniture; Food; Metallurgy and Electric/Electric-Electronic.

Table 5
Main performance indicators of requirement 4.4.2.
Managerial environmental performance indicators

How to assess

Investment in activities for environmental awareness

Occupational safety percentage
Employee satisfaction percentage
Employee's educational index

Total of investments destined to activities of environmental awareness

(Number of accidents at work/total employees)  100
General result of the employee satisfaction research
{(5  total of doctors) (3  total of masters) (2  total of specialists)
(1  total of graduate employees)/total of employees}
Total of resources applied in training and development/n of employee

Investment in training and development per employee

Industrial sectors: Metallurgy; Electric/Electric-Electronic; Petrochemical and Textile.

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L.M.S. Campos et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2015) 1e11

Table 6
Main performance indicators of requirement 4.4.7.
Managerial environmental performance indicators

How to assess

Number of emergency simulations carried out (ISO 14031)i

Emergency action plans
Response to emergencies
Communication of risks
Number of emergencies attended
Sectors: Paper and Cellulose/Furniture; Electric/Electric-Electronic and Textile.

Total
Total
Total
Total
Total

of
of
of
of
of

emergency simulations carried out during the year

implanted emergency action plans
fast responses to environmental accidents
communications about the environmental risks of the company
emergencies attended per year

Table 7
Main performance indicators of requirement 4.5.2.
Managerial environmental performance indicators

How to assess

Time to answer or correct environmental accidents (ISO 14031)

Total time to answer or correct environmental accidents in the year/number

of environmental incidents in the year
(Number of complied regulations/Total number of regulations)  100
(Total of compliance with company requirements and expectancies in
contracts/Total of services carried out)  100
Sum of the printed reports (positive negative)

Level of compliance with regulations (ISO 14031)

Level of compliance by service companies with company requirements and
expectancies in contracts (ISO 14031)
Number of positive and negative reports regarding the company's environmental
activities
Number of external environment initiatives reported to support the company
Sectors: Paper and Cellulose/Furniture; Metallurgy and Textile.

Sum of the external environment initiatives

Table 8
Main performance indicators of requirement 4.5.3.
Managerial environmental performance indicators

How to assess

Number of identied corrective actions that have ended or those that have not yet
ended (ISO 14031)
Number and type of non-compliance incidences with national or international
standards in force
Number of non-conformities detected during internal audits
Number of corrective and preventive actions started
Percentage of effectiveness of non-conformities, corrective and preventive actions started
Industrial sectors: Paper and Cellulose/Furniture; Electric/Electric-Electronic;
Petrochemical and Tobacco.

Total of corrective actions identied in the year

Total of non-compliance incidences with national or international
standards in force during the year (per type)
Total of non-conformities received in SGA internal audits
Total of corrective and preventive action reports started
(Total of effective actions/total of actions started)  100

Table 9
Main performance indicators of requirement 4.5.1.
Operational environmental performance Indicators

How to assess

Number of defective products (ISO 14031)

(Total of defective products/total of products produced)  100
Number of energy units consumed during product use (ISO 14031)
Total of energy units consumed during product use
Amount of fuel consumed (ISO 14031)
Total of fuel consumed in the year
Total of electric energy
Total of monthly electric energy consumed in Mwh per ton of produced proles
Volume of water consumed
Total of the monthly volume of water consumed in m3 per ton of produced proles
Industrial sectors: Paper and Cellulose/Furniture; Electric/Electric-Electronic and Tobacco.

Table 10
Main performance indicators of requirement 4.3.1.
Operational environmental performance Indicators
Amount of energy used per year or per product unit (ISO 14031)
Amount of waste for disposal (ISO 14031)
Amount of waste stored on-site (ISO 14031)
Noise measured at a location (ISO 14031)
Recycling of waste
Consumption of raw materials
Production of solid waste
Physical and chemical qualities of efuents
Amount of acquired electricity
Total energy consumption
Industrial sectors: Paper and Cellulose/Furniture; Electric/Electric-Electronic; Petrochemical and

How to assess
Total energy used per year or per product unit
Total of waste for monthly disposal
Total of waste stored on-site monthly
Total of noise measured per location
Total waste recycled monthly
Total of raw materials used monthly
Total of solid waste produced monthly
Verify compliance with legislation (administrative rule SSMA 05/89)
Total amount of electricity acquired monthly
Total of monthly energy
Textile.

Please cite this article in press as: Campos, L.M.S., et al., Environmental performance indicators: a study on ISO 14001 certied companies,
Journal of Cleaner Production (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.03.019

L.M.S. Campos et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2015) 1e11

know, this is a highly impactful sector due to the nature of its operations, as the pulp and paper/furniture/wood, textile, electrical/
electronics and tobacco industries.
4.3. Analysis of principal components (ACP) and groups of
companies
The analysis veried that the rst two factors regained 78.81% of
the inertia of the system, which was sufcient to be included in the
study. When predicting the variables shown in Fig. 1, the main plan
(performance indicators by requirement of the standard) indicated
positive correlations between the majorities of indicators, as
demonstrated by the acute angles between the vectors that
represent the variable. An angle of approximately 90 between the
indicators Non-conformances, Corrective Action and Preventive
Action (NCACP), Emergency Preparedness and Response (PRAE)
and Legal and other requirements (RLEO) denotes a lack of association among these indicators. In other words, the uctuations
in the number of indicators that a company uses for NCACP, for
example, does not depend on the number of indicators used for
PRAE and RLEO, which are interrelated. The indicators Non-conformances, Corrective Action and Preventive Action (NCACP) were
also veried to have higher correlation with the indicator Monitoring and Measurement (MOME), followed by Operational
Control (COPE).
A cluster analysis was then conducted from factorial scores of
companies, including the rst ve factors that accounted for 93.43%
of the variance. The group constitution was obtained by the combined Ward method, and the Euclidian distance measure of similarity or likeness was chosen to generate the dendrogram showed
in Fig. 2.
Using the distance of combination 8 as the cutting line for the
interpretation, the grouping of six companies was veried (highlighted with colors (in the web version) in Fig. 2). This result shows
that the rst group consisted of twelve companies (E24 to E6) and,
thus, it was the most homogeneous compared to the remaining.

Fig. 1. Projection of the variables. Environmental Policy (PAMB); Legal and other requirements (RLEO); Objectives, Targets and Programs (OMEP); Resources, Functions,
Responsibility and Authority (RFRA); Competence, training and awareness (CTEC);
Communication (COMU); Emergence, preparedness and response (PRAE); Evaluation
of compliance (ARLO); Non-conformances, corrective and preventive action (NCACP);
Environmental aspects (AAMB); Operational Control (COPE); Monitoring and measurement (MOME).
Source: Research data.

This group primarily consisted of the industrial paper and cellulose/

furniture/wood sector (E11, E12, E25, E37, and E38), which was
represented by only 2 companies, number 22 and 30 in another
group. This group highlights companies that always or
frequently use most of the performance indicators required by
the standard.
The third group formed exclusively by two companies (E8 and
E9) in the transport industry that uses a minimum amount of
environmental performance indicators required by the standard
was also emphasized. The remaining groups are represented by the
tobacco, electricity/electro-electronics/electronic, petrochemical
and provision of services industry, which use a small number of
performance indicators required by the standard compared to the
rst group, as discussed earlier.
The group analysis (dendogram in Fig. 2) considered six groups
of companies (G1 a G6) and industrial prioritized sectors related to
standard requirements and main environmental indicators. The
criterions to select the indicators were the top three most
frequently adopted by the groups of companies. However, in some
groups the indicators had the same frequency. Therefore, those
were described as having the same value.
Table 11 shows the industry sectors, the standard requirements,
and a list of the key performance indicators most frequently used
by companies, as grouped by cluster analysis.
In the rst group of companies (G1) ve sectors are represented.
The last two, which belong to the food industry and tobacco, has the
same number of companies. Therefore, they share the same position. It is noteworthy that this group most frequently used three
performance indicators of a single standard requirement: Legal and
other requirements (RLEO). This means that such companies are
concerned primarily with monitoring indicators basically related to
the legal demands.
The second group (G2) primarily consists of the tobacco industry, followed by service sectors and food industry. Those sector
have the same number of companies and monitor 15 performance
indicators more frequently. It was not possible to select only the
three main indicators because there is no predominance of any of
them since all have the same percentage of frequency of use. These
indicators belong to four standard requirements: RLEO (Legal and
other requirements), CTEC (Competence, training and awareness),
NCACP (Non-conformances, corrective and preventive action) and
AAMB (Environmental aspects).
The third (G3) and fth (G5) group, stand out because they are
formed by only one industrial sector, namely: transportation and
petrochemicals respectively. The transport sector more frequently
uses two main performance indicators from the requirements RLEO
(Legal and other requirements) and CTEC (Competence, training
and awareness). Once again, this result show the concern for
compliance with legislation and environmental awareness. For this
group (G3) the third most frequent was not selected because of
having many indicators with the same percentage of use. The
petrochemical sector pointed out four most used indicators (of
which the last two have the same percentage of use) related to
RLEO (Legal and other requirements), ARLO (Evaluation of
compliance) and AAMB (Environmental aspects).
When analyzing the fourth group of companies (G4) the three
main performance indicators concern the requirements: AAMB
(Environmental aspects) and MOME (Monitoring and measurement). They are frequently used for six industry sectors, with the
same number of companies in some sectors. From the data shown
in Table 11, it is possible to conclude that this group is concerned
about the environment, primarily by controlling energy resources
and water.
Finally, the sixth group of companies (G6) is formed mainly by
the service sector, followed by the metallurgical industries, food

Please cite this article in press as: Campos, L.M.S., et al., Environmental performance indicators: a study on ISO 14001 certied companies,
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L.M.S. Campos et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2015) 1e11

Fig. 2. Dendrogram of companies from factorial scores of ACP. The numbers after the letter E represent the companies' respondents (from 1 to 39) and sector (from 1 to 10). The
following industries were included: 1 paper and cellulose/furniture/wood; 2 food; 3 civil construction; 4 Electricity/electric-electronic/electronic; 5 metallurgy;
6 provision of services; 7 textile; 8 transport; 9 tobacco; 10 petrochemical.
Source: Research data.

and textile, which have the same number of companies. These

organizations employ a large number of performance indicators,
but there is no predominance of any one. Therefore, it was not
possible to select the top three considering the frequency of use.
Indicators listed in Table 11 are from the following requirements:
CTEC (Competence, training and awareness), PRAE (Emergence,
preparedness and response), NCACP (Non-conformances, corrective and preventive action) and AAMB (Environmental aspects).
Finally, one can clain that the overall picture in Table 11 suggests
that the requirements RLEO (Legal and other requirements) and
AAMB (Environmental aspects) were most commonly used. This
demonstrated that the company concern is centered in complying
to the legal requirements in addition to the conservation of environmental resources, which may be considered as basic.

5. Conclusions
This work presented the results of a survey that sought to
determine the set of environmental performance indicators that
have been used by companies certied by ISO 14001 in Southern of
Brazil. This work intended to contribute to the environment community that addresses this subject and companies that want to
manage and continually improve their EMS.
The data analysis indicated three different sets of requirements
for the standard. The rst group is characterized by a higher
number of companies and/or sectors that always or often use
most of the indicators (standard requirements: 4.3.2 Legal and
other requirements; 4.3.3 Objectives, goals and programs; 4.4.7
Emergency preparedness and response; 4.5.3 Nonconformity,
corrective action and preventive action, and 4.3.1.environmental
aspects). Companies most frequently use performance indicators
that are directly associated with legal requirements, possibly
because companies are forced to meet the environmental
regulations.

The second group is characterized by a higher number of companies that do not or rarely use most of the performance indicators (standard requirements: 4.4.3 Communication, and 4.4.6
Control operational). Apparently, these requirements are more
qualitatively monitored while considering that the standard does
not require the company to systematically monitor or measure all
of the requisites of the standard. Nevertheless, this requires more
in-depth studies.
The third group was formed exclusively by the requirement
4.5.1 Monitoring and Measurement. This group was characterized
by an apparent uncertainty regarding the use of operational indicators. Four of the 10 industrial sectors claimed they always or
often use most of the indicators listed. Likewise, four of the 10
industrial sectors stated they rarely or never use the same indicators. Nevertheless, the analysis of the sectors themselves has
not shown a discrepancy. The set of sectors that checked always
or often used consists of paper and pulp companies as well as the
furniture/wood, textile, electrical/electronic and tobacco industries,
which have greater control of their activities because they are under more pressure from society. The transport, services and construction sectors suffer less pressure.
The data also indicate that the pulp and paper/furniture/wood
and textiles sectors of the Southern of Brazil generally consist of
companies that encompass some sort of monitoring of their EMS
using environmental performance indicators. This trend can be
attributed to the fact that these two sectors were pioneers in
seeking to certify their EMS. The companies in the services sectors
are the least likely to use indicators, probably because its features
are less polluting.
From cluster analysis, groups of companies related to the industrial sectors, the standard requirements and a summary of the
key performance indicators used more frequently were also identied. Legal and other requirements (RLEO) and Environmental
Aspects (AAMB) are the requirements most representative. In
addition, there should be a concern for companies to meet the legal

Please cite this article in press as: Campos, L.M.S., et al., Environmental performance indicators: a study on ISO 14001 certied companies,
Journal of Cleaner Production (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.03.019

L.M.S. Campos et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2015) 1e11

Table 11
Main groups of companies by sectors, standard requirements, and performance indicators most frequently used.
Groups of
companies

Priority sectors

Requirements of the standard

Name of the main indicators used

G1

1 Paper and
cellulose/furniture/wood
2 Metallurgy
3 Textile
4 Food
4 Tobacco
1 Tobacco
2 Provision of services
2 Food

RLEO

1 Compliance with the legislation

2 Number of legal non-conformities registered
3 Legal parameters regarding the discharge of efuents required by legislation

G3

1 Transport

RLEO/CTEC

G4

1 Electricity/electric-electronic/
electronic
2 Paper and cellulose/furniture/
wood
2 Provision of services
2 Civil construction
3 Textile
3 Food
1 Petrochemical

AAMB/MOME

G2

G5

G6

1
2
2
2

Provision of services
Metallurgy;
Food
Textile

RLEO/CTEC/NCACP/AAMB

RLEO/ARLO/AAMB

CTEC/PRAE/NCACP/AAMB

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Compliance with the legislation

Number of complaints reported regarding the environment
Number of legal non-conformities registered
Legal parameters regarding the discharge of efuents required by legislation
Occupational safety percentage
Investment in training and development per employee
Number of identied corrective actions that have ended or those that have
not yet ended
8 Number and type of non-compliance incidences with national or
international standards in force
9 Number of non-conformities detected during internal audits
10 Number of corrective and preventive actions started
11 Percentage of effectiveness of non-conformities, corrective and
preventive actions started
12 Amount of waste for disposal
13 Recycling of waste
14 Production of solid waste
15 Physical and chemical qualities of efuents
1 Compliance with the legislation
2 Investment in activities for environmental awareness
1 Total energy consumption
2 Total of electric energy
3 Volume of water consumed

1
2
3
4

Number of legal non-conformities registered

Number of accidents occurred throughout company history
Time to answer or correct environmental accidents
Total energy consumption
1 Occupational safety percentage
2 Number of emergency simulations carried out
3 Number of emergencies attended
4 Number of identied corrective actions that have ended or those
that have not yet ended
5 Number of non-conformities detected during internal audits
6 Number of corrective and preventive actions started
7 Percentage of effectiveness of non-conformities, corrective and
preventive actions started
8 Amount of energy used per year or per product unit
9 Amount of waste for disposal
10 Amount of waste stored on-site
11 Noise measured at a location
12 Recycling of waste
13 Consumption of raw materials
14 Production of solid waste
15 Amount of acquired electricity
16 Total energy consumption

Requirements of the standard: Legal and other requirements (RLEO); Competence, training and awareness (CTEC); Non-conformances, corrective and preventive action
(NCACP); Environmental aspects (AAMB); Monitoring and measurement (MOME); Evaluation of compliance (ARLO); Emergence, preparedness and response (PRAE).

requirements as well as the conservation of environmental resources, which is, in fact, a conrmatory result.
Finally, this work does suffer from limitations when conducting
this research. A limited number of companies answered the questionnaire, primarily because it was long to some extent. Moreover,
the application includes one state (Santa Catarina) in a developing
country, although it is relevant in the in the Southern of Brazil. This
limitation does not invalidate the present study, since the results
can be added to previous studies on ISO 14000. Future studies

should consider increase the external validity by expand the survey

to other parts of the nation.
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Journal of Cleaner Production (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.03.019

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Please cite this article in press as: Campos, L.M.S., et al., Environmental performance indicators: a study on ISO 14001 certied companies,
Journal of Cleaner Production (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.03.019