Glossary of Terms

Assessment

The process of gathering data and performing calculations to develop results to describe a situation or process.

Carbon footprint

An estimate of the amount of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide and various CFC's) released as a result of a series of actions or the manufacture and use of a product.

Carbon intensity analysis

A determination of the amount of greenhouse gases (see carbon footprint) that are associated with a specific quantity of material (e.g., a unit of mass or volume (expressed in units such as kg of Carbon dioxide equivalent per kg of material manufactured - that is kg CO2-e/kg)

Carbon Trust certification

The Carbon Trust is a not-for-profit UK-based company that has developed a process for performing third-party validation of estimates of carbon footprints
https://www.carbontrust.com/who-we-are/principles-and-company-information

CDP

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is "CDP is a not-for-profit charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts."
https://www.cdp.net/en/info/about-us

Consent Decree

A Consent Decree is a regulatory enforcement agreement entered into between a company and a regulatory agency (frequently the US Environmental Protection Agency) after a company has been found to have violated laws and thereby gained some environmental benefit. Typically these agreement are associated with fines and may have a structure of additional penalties (called stipulated penalties) after they are signed if there are additional self-reported emissions exceedances or other non-compliance events.

Cradle-to-gate

The designation of a carbon footprint or life cycle assessment as covering the life cycle stages from the extraction of raw materials from the earth (the cradle) to the exit of the manufacturing process for that product (the gate, or sometimes further defined as the plant gate).

Cradle-to-grave

The designation of a carbon footprint or life cycle assessment as covering the life cycle stages from the extraction of raw materials from the earth (the cradle) to final end-of-life for the product (the grave). Note that where recycling occurs, this aspect may also be included in a cradle to grave analysis (up to the point where the material has entered its next use as a raw material or product substitute).

EHS

Abbreviation for Environmental, Health and Safety. These words may be used in various orders, resulting in varying abbreviations (e.g., HES, SHE, etc.)

EMS

Abbreviation for Environmental Management System

EPA

Abbreviation for Environmental Protection Agency

EPD

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a user-friendly summary form that is based on a life cycle assessment of a product or service. It is similar to a Safety Data Sheet (SDS) in that it has a prescribed tabular format, but instead of covering health and safety information, it covers the environmental impacts from the life cycle of manufacturing, using and disposal of a product. Often these EPDs are published by a program registrar and placed online for reference. One of the best known of these can be found at:
https://www.environdec.com/

GREET

The Argonne National Laboratory (operated by the US Department of Energy) has developed a fuel and transportation model called The Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies Model (GREET) to describe the greenhouse gas emissions, water use and other criteria pollutants emitted from the manufacture and use of a very wide range of fuels. It can be downloaded at:
https://greet.es.anl.gov/greet.models

GRI

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an independent, non-profit institution based in The Netherlands which has published comprehensive guidelines on developing corporate sustainability reports. In 2016, the guidelines became GRI Standards which have been widely accepted by the investment community as a standard and process that must be met. More info can be found at:
https://www.globalreporting.org/about-gri/mission-history/

ISO 14040 and IS 14044

These two standard govern the development of formal life cycle assessment studies and are also often applied to aspects of carbon footprint studies. They are available for purchase through various vendors such as TechStreet:
https://www.techstreet.com/searches/30538914

LCA

A life cycle assessment (LCA) is a standardized, comprehensive method to evaluate potential environmental and human health impacts throughout the life cycle of a product or service from raw materials to end of life (or to some other stopping point short of that based on the situation such as a manufacturing plant gate, in which case the study would be called a cradle-to-gate assessment). The extent to which various stages are included or excluded may be as a result of where a comparative study is being conducted and some aspects of the life cycle are the same for both products being compared.

LDAR

Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) is a process of monitoring volatile organic compounds (VOC's) that leak to the air from process piping components, pumps and compressors. Refineries and chemical plants are generally required by EPA regulations to conduct periodic monitoring of these emissions sources, and may be required to repair components that leak above a certain measurement threshold. States and regional air regulatory agencies may add state monitoring and reporting requirements to those mandated by EPA (for example Texas and California), and these may be necessary only for refineries or chemical plants located in ozone non-attainment areas.

LEED

The Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) administers LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) registration and certification, performing third-party technical reviews and verification of LEED-registered projects. The use of products in a building that have obtained an EPD can result in credits that count towards various level of sustainability recognition (e. g., Gold, Platinum, etc.)

Materiality Assessment

A Materiality Assessment identifies critical elements of a system, process, product, or company that positively and negatively impact the ability to achieve goals in each facet of ESG and sustainability programs. Material issues identified by the materiality assessment represent a company’s most significant environmental, social, and governance concerns from the standpoint of stakeholder interests and a business’s license to operate

PCR

Product Category Rules (PCR's) are developed for classes of products or services by an EPD Registrar to given the methodology for the performance of LCA's and the required content and format for resulting EPD's. By standardizing those results, the registrar can more easily organize them for online access.

Product Life Cycle

The product life cycle is a description of the process that starts from extracting raw materials from the earth through the product manufacturer's own processing steps to the sales and distribution steps and on through use by the consumer and the ultimate disposal (or recycling) of the product at the end of its useful life.

QA/QC

Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) refers to the process by which measurement data from a process or collections of processes is reviewed and judged. This analysis can also include adjusting for missing data, replacing or excluding outliers, applying assumptions for data that cannot actually be measured and performing check and further analysis on the suitability of calculated results. This process often includes a sensitivity analysis and an uncertainty analysis. A further best practice is to benchmark the results with data and calculations performed by others that should be similar.

RCRA

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1980 directed EPA to develop a comprehensive set of regulations to require care in the handling, treatment and disposal of hazardous wastes. These regulations can be found in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) as 40 CFR 261-268.
https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=5dd62a38aed34fbed272ccd4a93a292d&mc=true&tpl=/ecfrbrowse/Title40/40CIsubchapI.tpl

Scope 1

Life cycle scientists have divided environmental impacts into three road categories depending on which part of the life cycle contributes them to the environment. Scope 1 emissions are referred to as "direct" because they are the direct responsibility of the site operators actions. The include combustion of fuels at the site, venting greenhouse gases (e.g., methane) or the extraction of materials from the earth at the site (e.g., mining).

Scope 2

Scope 2 emissions are labeled as "indirect" because they do not occur at the product manufacturer's plant site but they are a consequence of its operations. Examples of these emissions include electricity (since the power plant is not typically on the manufacturing site premises nor is it operated by that company), steam production offsite and heated media delivery (e.g., a circulated hot water system).

Scope 3

Scope 3 emissions are those that cannot be classified as Scope 1 or Scope 2. Examples of these include the impacts from raw material manufacture, various transportation steps upstream and downstream of the company's manufacturing site, the distribution and sales operations, the use of the product by the consumer (or downstream business), and ultimately the end of life impacts (from waste treatment, disposal and/or recycling).

Sustainability

There are many ways to describe sustainability. Perhaps the most clear is provided by the 2005 World Summit on Social Development which identified sustainable in terms of three types of goals: economic development, social development, and environmental protection. Wikipedia provides a broad spectrum of possible ways to describe this term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

Sustainability Plan

A sustainability plan is developed by a company to communicate internally and externally the company's intended process to establish governance, policies and procedures to establish and move towards sustainability goals. The sustainability plan is typically based on a set of business priorities that have been established by a materiality assessment.

TSCA

The US EPA Toxic Substance Control Act covers a number of aspects of chemical manufacturing.  Most significant for most manufacturing facilities is the requirements to submit a pre-manufacturing notification (PMN) prior to the initial product of certain chemicals, and the requirement to submit a Chemical Data Report (CDR) if they manufacturer or import chemicals over certain thresholds.   The CDR covers the quantities they have manufactured or imported by year, reported historically each four years (the next report is required in 2024 covering operations in the four years from 2020 to 2023).  https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/06/22/2023-13254/announcing-the-2024-chemical-data-reporting-submission-period

Tier 2

The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) created the requirement to report an industrial facility’s hazardous chemical inventory, the average and maximum inventory of chemicals stored on site during the report year that had safety risks (physical or health hazards) important enough to be reflected on a Safety Data Sheet (SDS) if they are present over a specified threshold quantity (over 25,000 lb for many chemicals).  Many states have added state specific reporting elements and have developed their own report submittal portals.  https://www.epa.gov/epcra/tier-ii-forms-and-instructions

TRI

A Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) is an annual accounting by major manufacturing facilities of releases of a specified list of hazardous chemicals to the air, to water and to land. These reports are mandated by EPA which has establish a comprehensive process by which the calculations related to this reporting must be performed. EPA requires the plants to follow a hierarchy of emissions estimation methods that seek to leverage all readily available data, and to prioritize measurements over the use of emission factors. Results reported are publicly assessable and in fact the entire year's reporting can be accessed via a single downloadable file.
https://www.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program/tri-basic-data-files-calendar-years-1987-2019

WRI/WBCSD

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) was jointly convened in 1998 by World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and World Resources Institute (WRI). Two key standards developed by these groups are available: Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard and The Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard
https://ghgprotocol.org/standards