This section contains an overview of how the TSP website operates, how the sustainability assessment was created and keeps evolving. You can find the latest updates under What is new in 2023? Thank you for your continuous support!

From sharing knowledge to measuring impact to setting targets

Presentations and Meetings Notes

Over the years, a body of knowledge accumulates through informal conversations, conferences, presentations of trial-and-learn experiments, etc.

This raw knowledge can be found under the Knowledge Sharing section on TSP.

Industry Practices

Through experience industry best practices emerge. A practice must fulfill the following criteria.

  • There must be a body of knowledge to support the practice.
  • The practice's intrinsic Environmental value, Ops/maintenance value, Financial value, and implementation ease can be assessed qualitatively.
  • The practice's impact in terms of Energy & Green House Gas (GHG) Emissions, Water or Waste can be measured, or can lead to more accurate measurements.
  • The value of the practice to one or more industry segments can be demonstrated.

There are currently 400+ environmental sustainability best practices covering 24 industries segments on TSP. They form the basis of a rigorous sustainability assessment of an organization.

Practices are selected through a transparent and inclusive content governance process and are updated regularly.

Core Questions

Through practices widely implemented and industry reporting frameworks (e.g. CDP, GRI, SASB), core questions are identified. These questions are used as the backbone of sustainability RFx questionnaire and supplier Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scorecarding.

A core question must fulfill the following criteria.

  • The question is mapped to one or more reporting framework (e.g. CDP, GRI, SASB).
  • An answer to the question can be validated by a 3rd party through a set of specified documentation.
  • A negative answer can be remedied by setting a concrete target and improvement plan.

There are currently 25 core questions. While an organization can optionally add one or multiple practices industry segments to its assessment, the core questions must be answered before an assessment is completed.

Core questions are selected through a transparent and inclusive content governance process and are updated regularly.

Assessments can be found under the Reporting section on TSP.

Structure of the sustainability assessment

Governance & management topics

These are Yes/no core questions. In order to answer yes, an organization must have processes and documentation in place to support that answer. Documentation can be validated by third-parties following the criteria found in the question extended description.

Data & metrics

The sustainability assessment contains a section to report Energy, GHG Emissions, Water and Waste data metrics.

If you readily have that data, you can enter it directly. Otherwise there are tools under the Tracking section on TSP to to track your organization's energy, water and waste metrics and estimate Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.

Targets

This section contains free form text fields, baseline and horizon dates to describe Energy use, GHG Emissions reduction, Water use and Waste reduction targets.

Supporting plans to hit those targets must be provided. TSP provides tools to create an improvement plan when you add an industry segment practices section to an assessment.