Event Details

The Pentland Centre is hosting a series of sessions designed for our Professional Services members, and open to Professional Services colleagues across the University, as well as academic colleagues who may not have expertise in the topic.

This seminar will explore where sustainability metrics come from. These numbers increasingly shape business decisions, investor priorities, and policy debates, yet their origins are rarely brought to the forefront of sustainability discussions.

Drawing on experience developing a life cycle assessment tool for a circular platform business, the session will look at how the tool calculated environmental impacts across product lifecycles, integrating databases like Ecoinvent and incorporating assumptions about life extension, displacement effects, and garment use. The tool informed internal decisions and external client assessments, providing recommendations such as changing shipping methods or reconsidering life extension activities.

Building the tool also revealed tensions that made its development and implementation more difficult than anticipated. These are not failures of individual tools or practitioners, but structural tensions in measuring sustainability within business contexts. The session highlights three types of challenge that rarely appear in sustainability reports:

1. methodological choices, where system boundaries, allocation methods, and metrics were shaped by resource and knowledge limitations and business goals;
2. data constraints, where missing or problematic data and the assumptions made in its absence influenced measurement outcomes;
3. and business tensions, where results that contradicted business interests led to organisational pushback and consumer confusion that shaped what was reported.

The session concludes with a facilitated discussion on how to better align business and environmental goals in sustainability, and what more honest, useful measurement would look like.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and SDG 13 (Climate Action)

NB: The seminar runs from 13:00-14:00 in LUMS LT14 and on Teams. Please note that this session will be recorded.

Open to LU staff and students - registration required. The sessions are designed to present research expertise in straightforward language, making it easier for non-academic staff to engage with the speaker's work.

Photo at top of page by readymade at Pexels.