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Monitoring Progress: The Benchmarking Process
What is Benchmarking? Benchmarking Sustainability involves setting specific targets for actions that can be measured, to measure how close we are to reaching our goals. For example, the Province of Ontario set a goal of 60% diversion of waste from landfill. The City of Pickering and the Region of Durham therefore measure the tons of waste going to landfill and those going to recycling and organic waste collection, to determine how close it is to meeting that goal.
How does it work? The process involves:
What is the City of Pickering doing to monitor progress? In June 2006, Pickering City Council adopted the report Sustainable Pickering: A Framework for Benchmarking Sustainability. In 2007, the City established five Working Groups to reflect the five key Objectives:
Each Working Group had about ten members. Most were people who live and/or work in Pickering, but a few were non-residents who had particular expertise to share. The Working Groups helped develop the indicators that the City is using to monitor its progress.
In 2007, the Benchmarking Committee was reconstituted as the Sustainable Pickering Advisory Committee to provide leadership, direction and advice to Council and staff on the Sustainable Pickering journey.
In 2010 the City released the Measuring Sustainability Progress Report, which identified the current status for half of the 32 indicators. After futher collaboration with technical working groups, data collection and completing a Community Sustainability Survey, the City is able to report on the remaining indicators. In November 2011, the revised Measuring Sustainability Report will be released. Some benchmarking efforts are already underway such as the Partners for Climate Protection (PCP) program, which is targeting greenhouse gas emissions. Click for more information about PCP. |
