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BIJ 12,2

Environmental and operational sustainability of airports

Core indicators and stakeholder communication
Paul J. Upham
Tyndall Centre (North), School of Mechanical Engineering, UMIST, Manchester, UK

166

Julia N. Mills
Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Centre for Aviation, Transport and Environment (CATE), Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to propose and assess a core set of environmental and operational sustainability indicators for airport benchmarking, based on research conducted for a decision support tool designed to support airport environmental and operational sustainability. Seeks to make recommendations on the external use of sustainability indicators in stakeholder communication, based on a separate survey of the way in which UK airports use environmental and sustainability benchmarking reports. Design/methodology/approach The indicators are designed to minimise additional data collection demands while reecting sustainability theory to a practicable extent. Findings Bringing core environmental and operational indicators together helps to make their inter-relationship explicit. The indicators are a minimum set, and their limitations with respect to sustainability are made explicit. Originality/value Reports on a survey of the current extent of, and approaches to, stakeholder communication undertaken by airports in the UK, particularly external use of environmental and sustainability benchmarking results. Keywords Economic sustainability, Airports, Communication, United Kingdom Paper type Research paper

Benchmarking: An International Journal Vol. 12 No. 2, 2005 pp. 166-179 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1463-5771 DOI 10.1108/14635770510593103

Introduction For the European Union, sustainable mobility is an overarching objective of the 1998-2004 action programme for transport (European Commission, 1998). Busy airports occupy substantial areas of land, entail signicant urban development in the form of ancillary support services, and mobilise considerable levels of surface trafc. Despite this, airports and airlines are relatively neglected in the academic environmental management literature, though this is being remedied. Tunstall-Pedoe et al. (1996) have addressed a range of issues relating to the environmental liabilities and social responsibilities of airports, and Janic (1999) has reviewed the environmental externalities of aviation as a whole. Upham (2001a) has compared sustainability theory with UK and European airports policy and practice, and has discussed the socially contested meaning of environmental capacity in the context of aviation (Upham, 2001b;

Upham et al., 2003). Hooper and Lever (2002) have assessed the limited extent to which environmental reporting by airlines currently informs and empowers corporate stakeholders. Commercial airport environmental and sustainability reports are produced by several of the major European airports. Both types of report tend to contain theme-based data in varying levels of detail, relating largely to mitigation measures, ambient environmental quality, wastes, and, to a lesser extent, to selected forms of resource consumption. However, these environmental reports also tend to lack the information necessary for meaningful and consistent comparison of environmental and sustainability performance between airports. In particular, they tend to lack detail on denition of the reporting entity (discussed below), and can neglect absolute data in preference for normalised indicators that provide a better impression of environmental performance. A non-standardised range of quantitative environmental (and, to a lesser extent, social) performance indicators is similarly a feature of environmental reporting in the airline sector (Dobbie and Hooper, 2001). In contrast, efforts at international standardisation of environmental and sustainability reporting (Global Reporting Initiative, 2002; Association of Chartered Certied Accountants, 2001) and independent work (Young and Welford, 1998) recommend absolute as well as relative measures, and monitoring of inputs as well as outputs. Comparison of airport sustainability performance using a set of standardised benchmarking and reporting indicators would help both airport managers and stakeholders to make judgements about airport performance, both comparative and per airport. Areas of differential impact are made more obvious through comparison, and reasons for differences can be investigated. Investigation can be facilitated by comparing airports of similar passenger and/or air trafc throughput, and also through use of normalisation (also discussed below). Observed differences can potentially be used as points of leverage for regulators and other stakeholders who may for whatever reasons consider that an airport should raise its environmental performance in terms of reducing its absolute impacts, or, if normalised measures are used, in terms of its environmental efciency. Sustainability benchmarking indicators are thus inherently political: they reect a particular approach to sustainability, including denition of what is to be sustained and in what state, and they offer potential management information to stakeholders when reported. It is a contention of this paper that while a core set of standardised benchmarking and reporting indicators is useful for everyone involved, for the purpose of good stakeholder relations airports should also ensure that stakeholders are in some agreement with the benchmarking indicators, and if necessary are involved in the design of supplementary indicators. Indeed, in order to facilitate local acceptance of operational growth, larger airports tend to actively seek dialogue with local stakeholders, a practice known in other sectors to support commercial activity (Hill, 2001; Hedstrom and Isenberg, 2002). Several studies have also illustrated the potential of sustainability reporting to both assist and be informed by stakeholder dialogue (e.g. Yuen and Yip, 2002). In order to further examine the use of stakeholder dialogue by UK airports, the paper reports on a survey of the current extent of, and approaches to, stakeholder communication undertaken by airports in the UK, particularly external use of environmental and sustainability benchmarking results. This follows the presentation of a core set of practicable

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sustainability indicators and a supporting theoretical framework. Attention is given to the limitations of the indicator scope, as it is also important to know what one is not indicating. The recommended indicators were developed and selected as part of research for an integrated model of selected environmental and operational factors associated with airports, and are thus developed with awareness of typical environmental data collection at large UK airports[1]. Finally, observations and recommendations are made for external use of airport sustainability indicators. Indicating environmental and operational sustainability Sustainability is a concept that is arguably deliberately open to a wide range of interpretation, so enabling the subscription of a wide range of opinion that can actually be antithetical at the level of detailed denition and policy. Value judgement is unavoidable in this context, but whatever approach is chosen, the most important objective in terms of indicators is tness for purpose. That is, the indicators should inform decision-makers of what they need to know. Here, the environmentally precautious assumption is made that decision-makers should be informed of absolute quantities of factors relating to environmental impact, and that these should be related to environmental and operational thresholds. This approach ensures that the magnitudes of environmental impacts are not obscured as trafc or other operational performance increases. It does not oblige airport operators to prioritise environmental factors over operational, nancial or other performance, but it does mean that they and their stakeholders (assuming the indicators are externally reported) have accurate environmental information. An emphasis on absolute indicators is also intended to compensate for the difculties involved in relating sustainability to a single economic sector, such as aviation, and to single business enterprises, such as airports. These difculties are: . uncertainty regarding the critical thresholds of global environmental systems; . a related lack of protocols for allocating resource use and global impact-related emission quotas to, and hence targets for, individual enterprises or sectors; and . differing value judgements of what natural features should be sustained. For the time being, these difculties preclude consensual determination of the degree of environmental sustainability or unsustainability of any individual airport with respect to global environmental systems (Upham, 2001b). Nevertheless, in the meantime it can at least be said that since all economic activity has an adverse environmental impact, airports with higher throughputs of material and people will tend to be less sustainable than smaller-scale airports, given similar technologies and regulatory compliance (Upham, 2001b). This follows from the assumption that underpins basic life cycle analysis (LCA). That is, moving or using more of a substance for a purpose usually leads to a greater environmental impact than using less of the same substance for the same purpose (Schmidt-Bleek, 1993). In terms of indicating airport environmental sustainability, the implications of the above and other assumptions underlying the choice of indicators are as follows (Upham, 2001b): . Indicating airport sustainability requires absolute measures of resource material brought into, wastes emitted at and wastes taken from the site, as well as the same relative to business performance. That is, of resource inputs and waste

outputs. Waste output means all unwanted emissions to air, water and land. Ideally, impact-level LCA should be conducted for the system, but this ideal would inevitably be subject to greater or lesser degrees of compromise with large systems such as an airport. Absolute input and output measures should supplement conventional, regulated measures of impact on local environmental quality, and are intended to serve as proxy indicators for spatially and temporally distributed impacts associated with airport growth. As absolute input and output measures increase in magnitude for an airport, it can be assumed that the airport is moving in a direction away from environmental sustainability, assuming no major changes in types of material. This may be assumed to hold even if local environmental quality standards are met in the environs of the airport site. National limits for at least selected emissions volumes, most immediately for greenhouse gases, need to be set by governments at levels designed to bring the impacts of the human economy within the critical levels of large-scale environmental systems. Denominators for some local environmental sustainability indicators are more readily available. Environmental regulation is generally more developed at the local level, such that the environmental quality standards (e.g. biological oxygen demand for river water or efuent to river), set for businesses, can in principle be used as reference (threshold) levels within indicators. Indication of operational sustainability can in principle be indicated in the same way as environmental sustainability, using throughput maxima as denominators (thresholds). These maxima would relate to operational constraints, notably capacities of air routes, runways, gates, terminals, check-in points, surface access interchanges and routes, and car parks.

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In connection with the last point above, there are advantages to indicating selected operational factors together with environmental factors. Above all, decision makers are made more aware of the inter-relationships of environment and operations, and the way in which particular local environmental impacts can be mitigated through operational changes. A fuller discussion of the associated concept of airport environmental capacity, which may be dened as synonymous with integrated airport environmental and operational sustainability, is available in Upham et al. (2003). Description and assessment of the indicators The approaches of the Society of Environmental Toxicology And Chemistry (SETAC) (Barnthouse et al., 1998), the Global Research Intiative (2002) and the OECD (1998) have informed the proposed indicator set. Other informing factors are an awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of that set, and an awareness of indicators already used in sustainability benchmarking and reporting by other European airports[2]. Inevitably, there is a signicant element of value judgement in the choice of an indicator set. Nevertheless, the core set proposed here is consistent with the above theory. The indicator set can be characterised as a limited set of site and stressor or pressure-level environmental and operational indicators. For comparison, Tables I and II allocate the proposed airport indicators, Global Research Initiative (2002) indicators and provisional core sustainability indicator suggestions by the European

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Udo de Haes (1996) LCA impact Global Reporting categories Initiative (2002) Raw material mass Gross energy consumption Water consumption

Inputs to the airport site 1. Abiotic resources

2. Biotic resources Land use

3. Land

Notes: The table is arranged to give maximum correspondence with the left hand column of Udo de Haes (1996); The GRI (2002, pp. 49-51) recommends three other core environmental indicators that t less readily with an input/output categorisation: signicant impacts of principal products; percentage of the weight of products sold that is reclaimable at the end of the products useful life and per cent actually reclaimed; and incidents/nes for regulatory non-compliance

Table I. Comparison of environmental indicators and impact categories: inputs Global Reporting Initiative (2002) core Airport indicator impact environmental indicators categories Resource consumption Proposed core airport indicators Water consumption (whole site) Direct and indirect energy use Total materials use other than water, by type Total water use Percentage of materials used that are wastes from external sources Quantities of renewable fuel and material inputs (as above) Area of high biodiversity land owned Impacts on biodiversity Static power consumption Land and biodiversity Bio-fuelled electricity consumption Land area paved Land area under monoculture

Udo de Haes (1996) LCA impact categories Greenhouse gases in CO2 equivalent Global impacts Ozone depleting substances, in CFC-11 equivalent (emissions) See 7, 8, 9 Total waste by type and destination Waste returned to process or market Signicant spills Discharges to water by type VOC emissions Local air quality Local air quality SOx emissions NOx emissions Solid waste

Global Reporting Initiative European Environment Agency (2002) core environmental indicators (1998) Airport indicator impact categories

Proposed core airport indicators Local GHG emissions (i.e. static and mobile sources within airport cordon)

Outputs at or from the airport site 4. Global warming Greenhouse potential of emissions (EEA classes as input) 5. Depletion of Ozone depletion potential of stratospheric ozone emissions 6. Human toxicological impacts 7. Eco-toxicological Hazardous waste quantities impacts Other chemical emissions quantities

Monthly volume arising (kg) Monthly volume recycled or re-used (not incinerated) Monthly volume of hazardous waste arising NMVOC emissions

8. Photo-oxidant formation 9. Acidication Acidication potential (EEA classes as input)

Included as discharges to water Water quality Noise

Local atmospheric emissions (static and mobile within airport cordon) Local water pollutants Aircraft noise emissions

10. Eutrophicat-ion (inc. BOD and heat) 11. Odour 12. Noise 13. Radiation 14. Casualties

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Table II. Comparison of environmental indicators and impact categories: outputs

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Environment Agency (European Environment Agency, 1998) to a default list of LCA impact categories (or themes) provided by Udo de Haes (1996, p. 18). The latter is consistent with SETACs LCA indicator framework, which was developed through extensive peer-discussion. Corresponding impact categories and indicators are matched across authors in as far as this is possible, though allocation could have been undertaken differently with equal validity for some indicators. In terms of the indicator framework promoted by OECD (1998), passengers, surface access vehicles and aircraft are pressures. In LCA they would be the subject of the assessment, conceptually prior to the LCA impact categories of Udo de Haes (1996), and hence are not present in Tables I or II. It should be emphasised that use of this core indicator set in benchmarking, reporting and stakeholder dialogue, with or without supplementary indicators, would not of itself be sufcient to determine whether or not an airport was environmentally sustainable. The environmental sustainability of an entity is inherently connected with, and dependent on, the state of its environmental context. Thus while a rapidly growing airport, facilitating increasing resource use and waste production, will given prevailing fossil fuelled and urbanising technologies very probably be moving in an unsustainable direction, whether these activities are environmentally sustainable depends signicantly upon the levels of other activity affecting relevant parts of the biosphere. Moreover, determination of environmental sustainability would also depend upon what one considered as a relevant part of the biosphere: be it environmental media in a local region (the condition of which may be of high signicance to local residents), or a large-scale planetary system (e.g. relating to climate). Thus while the benchmarking indicators relate to environmental sustainability in the sense that they are based in sustainability theory and incorporate some environmental thresholds, it is important to realise that environmental sustainability indication is inevitably partial and in fact not wholly possible. Thus the recommended core indicators do not reect an ideal or comprehensive selection in terms of components or system boundary, but one for which monitored data tends to exist at medium to large airports, or which is judged readily amenable to collection. They are thus a minimum below which medium- to large-sized airports should not fall. The main indicator decits relative to the chosen precedents can be inferred from Tables I and II. In terms of inputs to the airport, indication is limited in terms of the extent to which it accounts for abiotic resource consumption. This means that material directly used for the additional infrastructure and services that support increased trafc movements, even within the airport boundary, will not be indicated. With respect to outputs from the airport accounted for in the LCA impact categories of Udo de Haes (1996), casualties, radiation and odour would not be indicated. In comparison to the Global Research Initiative (2002) core indicators, vehicle fuel use (aircraft and surface) is also omitted from the recommendations due to limited monitoring by some airports, though gaseous emissions would to some extent function as a proxy (particularly CO2 emissions, which are proportional to fuel use). Other core Global Research Initiative factors omitted include accidental discharges, instances of non-compliance, product impacts and the extent of product reclaimability (the latter is not directly relevant to airports). Identication of the inadequacies of the proposed indicator set begs the question of whether it would be not better to recommend a more comprehensive set. The

judgement made here is that the proposed core set is a good minimum, providing all involved understand their limitations in terms of a limited system boundary. A core minimum indicator set that does not overload decision-makers and stakeholders with (inevitably) incommensurate information is in this case judged preferable to higher information ows. However, if the resources available for indication and reporting allow, volumes of selected materials used (input to the airport system) should also be indicated, and progress made towards the core GRI indicators. It may be that some external stakeholders would prefer such supplementation, while the airport company itself may prefer supplementary normalised indicators. Indicator measurement units Table III details recommended measurement units for the indicators. The measures are divided into those that are absolute and those that are threshold-related. Although the scope of the indicators signicantly (though not wholly) reects data availability at the medium- to large-sized case study airports, their form is able to be less bound to airport monitoring. This is particularly the case regarding the inclusion of absolute indicators, as recommended by the Global Research Initiative (2002) and as consistent with the theory of sustainability indication summarised above (Upham, 2001a). In contrast, airport environmental reporting as currently practised often displays a preference for normalised (efciency) indicators. The threshold-related measures chosen here are referenced to units of time, passenger numbers or trafc movements. Each of these denominators is of conventional business interest, while the numerator is of environmental interest. In terms of other technical points, explicit denition of the reporting entity is necessary for consistent comparison of airports and associated standardisation in airport benchmarking. Airport sites tend to be occupied by a large range of tenant companies, performing functions that may be variously considered as within or without the denition of an airport. Airports vary in terms of their area occupied, physical and social environment, mix of commercial tenants, passenger types, surface access infrastructure and more. Much of this is beyond the airports control, or only partially subject to the inuence of the airport, yet these factors may (or may not) underlie observed differences when benchmarking. For this reason, benchmarking reports should be as explicit as is reasonably possible as to which wastes, resource usage and trafc ows are associated with which aspects of the airport site. While normalised indicators (e.g. electricity consumption per area of oor space, waste arising per passenger) are another method of aiding comparison on a common basis, these need to be treated cautiously in a sustainability context. Normalised indicators tend to have little direct relationship to operational or environmental sustainability limits. For this reason the options for this type of indicator are not set out in detail here, though they would merit a fuller examination if environmental efciency, not sustainability, were the main objective. Stakeholder dialogue by UK airports Environmental sustainability data collection, manipulation and indication are of little value without periodic internal and external reporting of results, associated trend monitoring and corrective action. In an airport context, stakeholder dialogue has the potential to play an important role in managing the industrys growth, and

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Indicators 1. Number of surface access vehicles: Diesel cars Petrol LGV Diesel LGV Rigid HGV Artic HGV Buses Motor cycles Diesel rail 2. Aircraft movements

Absolute measures Number arriving at airport boundary (monthly, annually) Number departing airport boundary (monthly, annually)

Threshold-related measures Movement number relative to hourly maxima

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Number of arrivals (hourly, monthly, yearly) Number of departures (hourly, monthly, yearly) Fossil-fuelled electricity consumption, kWh (monthly, yearly) Fossil-fuelled gas consumption, kWh (monthly, yearly) Wind, solar or bio-generated electricity consumption, kWh (monthly, yearly) NOx, CO2, N2O, CO2, CO, NMVOC, and PM10 (g) per source Ambient concentrations Day, evening and night LAeq (dB) and LA max (A-weighted long-term average and peak sound level) Number arriving at gates (number departing gates)

Movement number relative to hourly maximum

3. Static power consumption

Consumption relative to any relevant hourly maxima

4. Gaseous pollutant emissions (from surface vehicles, static power, aircraft) 5. Aircraft noise emissions

Ambient concentrations relative to statutory EU limits Numbers of people and km2 within noise contours (LAeq 50 and upward increments) relative to regulated limits Gate arrivals relative to hourly maxima Gate departures relative to hourly maxima Number arriving relative to hourly maxima Number departing relative to hourly maxima Volume consumed relative to hourly maximum Pollutant concentrations (efuent and ambient) relative to permitted maxima (continued)

6. Terminal passengers

7. Surface access passengers

Number arriving at airport boundary (number departing airport boundary) Monthly volume consumed (cubic metres) Efuent concentrations Ambient concentrations of water pollutants

Table III. Core indicators for monitoring integrated airport environmental and operational sustainability

8. Water consumption and waste water emission

Indicators 9. Solid waste

Absolute measures Monthly volume arising (kg) Monthly volume recycled or re-used (not incinerated/sent to incineration) Monthly volume of hazardous waste arising Area paved (m2, within airport boundary and ownership, includes building footprints) Area of high and medium biodiversity (m2, within airport boundary and ownership, includes building footprints)

Threshold-related measures Set targets for absolute volumes and relate performance to these

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Set target for absolute areas and relate performance to these

10. Land take and biodiversity

Notes: (1) As the magnitudes of the absolute measures increase, the airport moves away from environmental sustainability (an exception is the substitution of rail and bus passengers for car passengers). (2) As the magnitudes of the environmental threshold-related measures increase, the airport approaches its environmental capacity. (3) As the magnitudes of the operational threshold-related measures increase, the airport approaches the limits of its operational capacity. (4) Any supplementary relative or normative measures, such as electricity consumption and waste arising per passenger or air trafc movement, should not be seen as sustainability measures because they do not incorporate limits or thresholds. They may, however, function as indicators of environmental or operational efciency

Table III.

sustainability benchmarking and reporting can be an important part of that dialogue. Inter-airport sustainability would enable both the airport and its critics to gain a more informed idea of an airports performance, is a basis for discussion and demonstrates a willingness to take some accountability for environmental impacts[3]. On the other hand it also potentially provides information about an airport that may potentially be used to campaign against its activities: this is an inevitable accompaniment to public benchmarking and an unavoidable risk in an industry that is particularly dependent on good relations with local stakeholders. Nevertheless, the positive public relations value of sustainability and environmental indication (not involving inter-airport comparison) is reected in current reporting and stakeholder dialogue activity of UK airports. In a three-month study carried out at the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, 53 UK airports (the complete membership of the UK Airport Operators Association) were sent a questionnaire concerning their environmental reporting and stakeholder dialogue activity. Using the UK Airport Operators Association own size denitions[4], 100 per cent of large airports responded, 52 per cent of medium and 24 per cent of small airports. The UK-wide survey found that a large proportion (59 per cent) of respondent airports currently produce annual environmental or sustainability reports (Mills, 2003). However, these airports appeared to have no clear sense of audience for their reports, despite their statement that the objectives of environmental reporting are good practice, reputation/image maintenance and aiding the attainment of environmental/sustainability targets. Many (72 per cent) of the respondent airports saw their environmental/ sustainability reports as an important tool to improve stakeholder communication.

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However, the ndings do not give a strong indication that the airports are utilising their reports to full this potential. For example, almost 40 per cent of respondent airports do not invite feedback on their reports. While all of the large airports that produced an environmental or sustainability report invited feedback from their stakeholders, none of the small ones did. This could be interpreted as implying that environmental and sustainability reporting, as a method of aiding stakeholder dialogue, may not be appropriate for those airports at the smaller end of the spectrum. This possibility is reinforced by some of the comments made by respondents from small airports, to the effect that in their view other methods are more effective at inviting stakeholder dialogue. Methods cited include a letter-based invitation to members of the surrounding communities to participate in an open day at an airport, at which local residents may gain an insight into airport operations and may talk directly with airport staff, managers and/or directors. Reporting airport respondents showed no evidence of tailoring information to meet the needs of specic stakeholder groups. In other words, there was a lack of coordination between stakeholder dialogue and sustainability reporting. The study also found that the respondent airports reported on economic and social issues at low and inconsistent levels and that there is a lack of general consensus as to what issues should be covered in these aspects of sustainability reporting. Ultimately, the potential of environmental or sustainability reporting to stimulate, and indeed be enhanced by, stakeholder dialogue did not appear to be fully exploited by these airports. While the survey respondents recognised local communities as potentially the most inuential stakeholder group to the future growth and development of their airports, it is mainly the larger airports that regularly communicate with this group on sustainability issues. Communication methods between the respondent airports and their stakeholders tended to be passive. For example, while some (21 per cent of total airports and 60 per cent of large airports) airports have dedicated phone lines to provide a channel for stakeholder queries and complaints, the onus is on local people to make contact. Nevertheless, there was some evidence of interactive approaches to stakeholder dialogue from both large and small airports, such as discussion with local community members in a neutral setting (e.g. use of a public house for formal meetings), and holding of employee sustainability days. Recommendations on use of sustainability reports In the light of these ndings, several recommendations can be made regarding the external use of sustainability and environmental indicators and reports: . Further enhance the contribution of sustainability reporting to stakeholder dialogue, where this already occurs. UK airports are known to already take some consideration of the reporting activities of other airports. For example, one of the airports examined, planning to begin environmental/sustainability benchmarking and reporting within the next ve years, is facilitating this by reviewing reports provided by airports of a similar size and consulting with the Airport Operators Association (AOA). By encouraging this activity further, for example by way of an AOA environmental/sustainability award scheme, member airports could be stimulated to make improved use of the reports. A number of respondents (particularly those from small and medium-sized airports) also stated that they expect to enlist consultants to advise them in their

stakeholder dialogue activities and, thereby, drive us forward in the future. It can be inferred that airports are seeking guidance on stakeholder dialogue issues and consider the best practice of others in determining their own activities. It can similarly be inferred that example and competition have a role as a driver for improving sustainability performance and communication in the sector. Encourage more widespread adoption of sustainability reporting practice where appropriate. There is potential for greater reporting activity amongst UK airports, and an increase in the take-up of sustainability reporting in the medium size category of airports would be particularly appropriate. There is some evidence to suggest that legislation would help to achieve more widespread adoption of sustainability reporting practice for medium- to large-sized airports. For example, two respondent airports from the medium-sized category stated that they would not produce externally-available environmental or sustainability reports until legislation enforced such practice. Recognise that for small airports, a detailed, resource-intensive approach to managing and publicising sustainability efforts through reporting and benchmarking may be less appropriate, and that other avenues to enhance stakeholder dialogue also exist. Such avenues may involve the use of regular workshops or focus groups, for example. These methods would facilitate the discussion of what can be complex and contentious issues with members of local communities and other stakeholders (including airport management and campaign groups). Nevertheless, as small airports are still potentially subject to stakeholder concerns and may have statutory environmental responsibilities, for reasons of both accountability and good local relations the best option may be to report and benchmark with a sub set of the suggested indicators, supplemented by more informal communication methods.

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Conclusion Ideally, indication of the environmental sustainability of an airport requires impact(effects) level life cycle analysis of the airport system, referenced to global and local environmental thresholds. However, regular LCA of such large systems is impractical. The substitute theoretical approach recommended here is an indication of resource inputs to the airport, waste emissions at the site and waste outputs leaving the site, plus indication of impacts on local environmental quality. Yet in practice, it has been assumed that data availability will further compromise airport environmental sustainability indication. Core indicators relating to the environmental and operational sustainability of airports are proposed that take into account typical data availability and what can reasonably be expected of airports (Table III). By integrating operational and environmental sustainability indicators in a single set, the links between environment and operations in an airport context are more obvious than when taken separately. Despite the label core, these indicators will still require signicant environmental monitoring, and hence will be most appropriate for medium to large airports. The indicators could well be separately supplemented by social and economic indicators, which are not discussed here. Medium- to large-sized airports are recommended to work towards relevant global reporting initiative indicators as a

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practical model set, if resources permit. While supplementary normalised indicators are one means of aiding inter-airport benchmarking, and tend to be a part of existing airport industry indicator sets, they should not be used to the exclusion of indicators of absolute impact and impact relative to thresholds or limits. While evidence suggests a surprisingly high level of environmental and sustainability reporting by UK airports, there is scope for making better use of these benchmarking results in stakeholder dialogue. In particular, this would include closer tailoring of environmental and sustainability reports to the needs of specic stakeholder groups. The production of good practice guidance material for airport-stakeholder dialogue is one way in which the current methods of dialogue used by small airports could be improved. More generally, a periodic competition organised by an industry body such as the Airport Operators Association would help to raise standards and add value to existing practices.
Notes 1. Research on the decision support tool was supported by EPSRC Grant GR/M60200: Sustainability indicators for airport inter-modal transport hubs: a generic strategic design support approach. Data was supplied by Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle airports (see Thomas et al., 2000). 2. At the time of writing, the industry representative body Airports Council International has initiated a process of sustainability indicator standardisation, the results of which are not yet known. 3. To date the authors are unaware of any studies of the way in which stakeholders use comparative airport information, though such practice is known to take place in the context of night noise. 4. Size thresholds were not precisely dened; an experienced AoA ofcial allocated UK airports to size categories. References Association of Chartered Certied Accountants (2001), An Introduction to Environmental Reporting, ACCA, Certied Accountants Educational Trust, Glasgow, available at: www. acca.co.uk/sustainability/reading/ Barnthouse, L., Fava, J., Humphreys, K., Hunt, R., Laibson, L., Noesen, S., Norris, G., Owens, J. and Todd, J. (1998), Life-Cycle Impact Assessment: The State-of-the-Art, 2nd ed., Report of the SETAC Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) Impact Assessment Workgroup, SETAC LCA Advisory Group, Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) and SETAC Foundation for Environmental Education, Pensacola, FL. Dobbie, L. and Hooper, P. (2001), Airline Environmental Reporting: 2001 Survey, International Air Transport Association, Geneva. European Commission (1998), The Common Transport Policy. Sustainable Mobility: Perspectives for the Future, Commission Communication to the Council, European Parliament, Economic and Social Committee and Committee of the Regions, DG VII, European Commission, Brussels. European Environment Agency (1998), Making sustainability accountable, Newsletter 17, December, report on Workshop on eco-efciency, resource productivity and innovation, available at: http://org.eea.eu.int/documents/newsletters/newsletter-_17.shtml (accessed 7 February 2000).

Global Research Initiative (2002), Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, GRI, Boston, MA, available at: www.globalreporting.org Hedstrom, G. and Isenberg, M. (2002), Sustainable growth: on the brink of a major transformation, Corporate Environmental Strategy, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 13-23. Hill, J. (2001), Thinking about a more sustainable business-an indicators approach, Corporate Environmental Strategy, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 30-8. Hooper, P.D. and Lever, M. (2002), Corporate environmental reporting in the airline sector: a route to stakeholder empowerment?, paper presented at the 10th Greening of Industry Network Conference, Gothenburg, 23-26 June, available at: www.gin2002.miljo.chalmers.se Janic, M. (1999), Aviation and externalities: the accomplishments and problems, Transportation Research Part D, Vol. 4, pp. 159-80. Mills, J.N. (2003), The role of stakeholder dialogue in the sustainable development of UK airports, unpublished MSc thesis, ARIC, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (1998), Towards Sustainable Development: Environmental Indicators, OECD, Paris. Schmidt-Bleek, F. (1993), MIPS re-visited, Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, Vol. 2, pp. 407-12. Thomas, C., Gillingwater, D., Raper, D., Yang, Y., Upham, P. and Hinde, C. (2000), A strategic decision support tool for indicating airport sustainability, Environmental Modelling and Software, Vol. 16, pp. 297-8. Tunstall-Pedoe, N., Raper, D.W. and Holden, J. (Eds) (1996), Airports and the environment liabilities and social responsibilities, Proceedings of International Conference, Manchester Airport, July, 1995, Thomas Telford, London. Udo de Haes, H.A. (Ed.) (1996), Towards A Methodology For Life Cycle Impact Assessment, Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry-Europe, Brussels. Upham, P. (2001a), A comparison of sustainability theory with UK and European airports policy and practice, Journal of Environmental Management, Vol. 63 No. 3, pp. 237-48. Upham, P. (2001b), Environmental capacity of aviation: theoretical issues and basic research directions, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Vol. 44 No. 5, pp. 721-34. Upham, P., Thomas, C., Raper, D. and Gillingwater, D. (2003), Environmental capacity of airports: operational issues and prospects, Journal of Air Transport Management, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 145-51. Young, C.W. and Welford, R. (1998), An environmental performance measurement framework for Business, Greener Management International, Vol. 21, pp. 30-50. Yuen, C.P. and Yip, D. (2002), Corporate environmental reporting: the CLP power experience, Corporate Environmental Strategy, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 95-100.

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