Glossary

Business productivity: Basically a measure of the effectiveness and efficiency of your organization in generating output with the resources available. Productivity = output / input and can be physical or financial. Labour and capital productivity are typical productivity indicators used by SMEs.

Chemical of Concern (CoC): A chemical that is of moderate to high concern for ecotoxicity or human toxicity, but is not a Chemical of High Concern (CoHC). For this approach, a CoC has the GHS signal word “DANGER” and is not a CoHC.

Chemical of High Concern (CoHC): A chemical that meets any of the following criteria: i) Carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction (CMR); ii) Persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic substance (PBT); iii) Endocrine disruptors or neurotoxins; iv) Chemical whose breakdown products result in a CoHC that meets any of the preceding criteria. For the 2015 reporting period, the Chemical Footprint Project specifies a CoHC as any chemical on the California Candidate Chemicals List. You can download the Excel list and search by CAS No. at: https://www.dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/CandidateChemicals.cfm.

Chemical-related sustainability impact: Economic, social or environmental impacts involving the management of chemicals. The impacts result from a cause or action and can be positive or negative.

Chemicals management hotspot: A cause of one important or a group of many economic, social and environmental impacts. Hotspots can be at a company and/or across a chemical product’s life cycle. An example hotspot could be lead in paint which causes many health and environmental impacts over the paint’s life cycle.

Operational Excellence: An integrated programme or management system for continuous improvement and safely creating long-term value.

Pollution intensity: Pollution intensity is a measurement of how much pollution (air emissions, waste, wastewater) you generate per unit of product output. In measuring pollution intensity, waste and emissions are seen in relation to production. Pollution intensity = pollution / product output.

Product: A product is anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a want or need. Products can be a physical or tangible good (e.g. cotton yarn, IT programme), an intangible service (e.g. dyeing of cotton yarn to customer specifications), or a combination of goods and services (e.g. printing machine (good) with free optimization (service)).

Resource productivity: Measurement that shows how much product you produce per unit of resource (material, water, energy) used. Resource productivity = product output / resource input. Resource productivity is a measure of how productively resources are being used to produce the desired products and/or services.

Sound Management of Chemicals (SMOC):

Aims to prevent, and where not feasible, to minimize the potential for exposure of humans and the environment to toxic and hazardous chemicals
Includes prevention, reduction, remediation, minimization and elimination of risks from chemicals during their life cycle. This covers:

- Chemical intermediaries and final products, as well as chemicals found in other products or articles
- All life cycle stages: product design, raw material extraction, production of intermediate and final products, storage, transport, marketing and retail, use and disposal

Incorporates Green Chemistry and chemical process improvement
Applies best managerial practices to chemicals (techniques and technologies) at each stage of the life cycle
Enables sustainable consumption and production (SCP)

Unmet need: An unmet need is a need that is important to the customer and is not being met or fully satisfied by the current products being offered or available.

Value added: It represents the wealth created through the organization’s production process or provision of services. Value added measures the difference between sales and the cost of materials and services incurred to generate the sales. Value added = Sales – Cost of purchased goods and services