The environmental significance of facilities in service sector companies

Abstract

The study described in this paper quantifies the environmental impact of service sector companies. It demonstrates the importance of facility activities in the environmental strategy of such companies. A multiple‐case study approach and a life‐cycle assessment framework were used to estimate the environmental impact of five service companies. The result showed that for only around 5 per cent of total expenses, facility activities caused over half of the environmental impact in all cases, supporting the original hypothesis that the role played by facilities is of the utmost significance. However, the results varied somewhat between the environmental impact categories studied. For example, the contribution of facility activities to the climate change category ranged from 47 to 84 per cent, but ranged from 28 to 56 per cent in the summer smog category.