Search for objective environmental performance indicators of primary schools

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to seek to develop environmental scores to complement already existing academic scores in order to evaluate and compare school performance in the context of sustainable societies. Design/methodology/approach In a case study on one particular Brazilian school, the authors propose three indexes to grade school performance: academic achievement, sustainable design and environmental behavior. Findings The behavior refers to water and energy consumption, environmental education activities, waste production and sorting, noise level, food scraps and traffic density. Research limitations/implications The adoption of the scoreboard induces all members of the school community, students, teachers and service personnel, to participate in the measurements and in targeting. Practical implications All measured parameters are reduced to dimensionless fractions of ideal values in order to provide a basis for objective targeting within the school and for comparisons within the school universe. Social implications The scoreboard is transferable to the school universe in the quest for benchmaking environmental performance. Originality/value As a “bottom-up” management procedure, the study develops the ideal reference values suitable to the particular school in an effort to overcome their absence in the municipal context and to induce their application in that context.