Overview

For more than a decade now there has been debate on sustainable development – sustainability strategies and sustainability goals have been defined, sustainability reports produced and products rated as sustainable or non-sustainable, as the case may be. Surprisingly, there is little debate and little transparency as to how in fact sustainability is evaluated and which concrete improvements are proposed and implemented.

PROSA, in contrast, places a strong focus on a verifiable evaluation process and a clear evaluation framework. PROSA provides for this purpose the ProFitS (Products Fit to Sustainability) integrated evaluation framework. ProFitS is action-oriented and its outcomes can be presented in a qualitative-argumentative manner or in quantitative terms. Where required, it can be complemented or substituted by other transparent evaluation frameworks (cf. Figure 21).

In addition, for evaluations of (only) the two dimensions of ecology and economy, PROSA provides the Eco-Efficiency evaluation framework.

The purpose of the evaluation is generally to prepare strategic decisions and to identify sustainability opportunities and optimization avenues, and NOT to perform any absolute evaluation.

Nonetheless, ProFitS does provide opportunities for quantitative assessment,

• because this makes it possible to treat and present the great array of findings on different variants in a more systematic fashion,
• because certain assessments (e.g. that of eco-efficiency) are only possible at all if partial aggregation is performed (cf. the section on eco-efficiency),
• because, curiously, it is often only the quantitative assessment proposed in a strategy team or at a stakeholder workshop that triggers more in-depth discussion of qualitative evaluations,
• because companies with large product portfolios use indexes.