The US EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR) is happy to announce that the SMM Prioritization Tools are now available for use. They can be found on the EPA’s website at https://www.epa.gov/smm/sustainable-materials-management-prioritization-tools.

The SMM Prioritization Tools are life cycle-based tools that offer a starting place to establish priorities for environmental improvement, focus limited financial and human resources where action could offer greater holistic benefit, and consider key industries for collaboration. Currently there are two tools: a National Tool and an Organization Tool. The National Tool provides a big picture view of sustainability in the United States for those with a national focus, such as government, trade associations and NGOs. The Organizational Tool provides quick sustainability snapshots for organizations such as companies, small enterprises and their sustainability and procurement staff.

The Tools generate dynamic charts that present over 10 million data points from a fully transparent, open and freely available life cycle model created by EPA. These charts provide insights across more than 20 environmental, social and economic indicators for 389 categories of goods and services in the United States. They can be a great starting point when developing sustainability initiatives.