Green IS for GHG emission reporting on product-level? An action design research project in the meat industry

Abstract

Greenhouse gas emission reporting gained importance in the last years, due to societal and governmental pressure. However, this task is highly complex, especially in interdependent batch production processes and for reporting on the product-level. Green information systems, which collect, process and enhance the environmental information basis, are seen as a possible solution for this complex task, but only few Green IS accrued in IS research and practice. In this paper, we present initial results from an action design science research project. We studied three meat processing companies and developed a Green IS artifact that is capable to collect, process and report energy consumption and GHG emissions on product and process level. The evaluation for two sausage products shows that the artifact enhances the information basis with more detailed data towards average calculations, enabling more sustainable business processes. Finally, we propose design principles for the class of environmental accounting on product-level. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.