Using input‐output analysis for corporate benchmarking

In recent years, cost‐effective protection of the environment has become a more important goal for many businesses. Companies have been striving to reduce the environmental impacts of their products and packaging, while not incurring costs that put them at a competitive disadvantage. A key to accomplishing this goal is by benchmarking their performance against other companies. Benchmarking can be expensive, time consuming, or problematic because detailed benchmarking requires detailed, specific data that are generally confidential. A screening level benchmark can accomplish much of the goal quickly and cheaply. Focuses on a tool to make quick, screening level benchmarks of US industrial environmental performance and discusses how it can be used to evaluate a plant's environmental performance. Mentions other tools, notes its relationship to them, and discusses how it can be more broadly used. Finally, suggests ways that this type of benchmarking information can be used broadly within a firm for accounting and decision‐making purposes.