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John Byrd, PhD
Finance & Sustainability Programs
TRI National Training Conference
April 1, 2009
Acknowledgements
• This work was supported by EPA Grant
TI978547-01
• Barbara Conklin, EPA Region8, for
encouraging me to work on this project.
• Noran Eid at Innovest.
• Students in my Accounting and Finance
for Sustainability class, Spring 2009.
Objectives
• Introduce students to the TRI database.
• Develop sustainability teaching materials.
• Use TRI to further our discussion of SRI.
• Practice financial analysis with
envirnomental/nonfinancial data.
• Introduce data sources related to TRI.
Methodology
• Spoke to analysts at SRI mutual funds
and fund support groups (Pax World,
Innovest).
• Developed a case study using the TRI
database and related data based on its
use by investment professionals.
Measurement
• Feedback from students.
• Evaluation of student case reports.
• Ease of integrating TRI (and associated
data sources) into the case.
• Effectiveness in teaching some SRI
principles.
The Case
“Jane McMillan and the EPA’s TRI data”
• A new MBA at the Green Funds is asked
to develop an environmental risk
measure based on TRI data.
• Measure will make Green Funds more
competitive in SRI space.
• She is given a sample of chemical
companies data from several sources.
Case Data
• Raw TRI data for the 15 largest US
chemical companies 2300 rows
• Sales, profit and asset data for 2005/6.
• PERI Toxic 100 (top 15 plus companies
in sample of 15) for 2002 and 2005
which uses the EPA's Risk-Screening
Environmental Indicators data.
Case Internet Links
• Enforcement and Compliance History Online
(ECHO)
– http://www.epa-otis.gov/echo
• Right-to-Know Network
– http://www.rtknet.org/rtkdata.php
• RSEI (Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators)
– www.epa.gov/oppt/rsei/
Case Objective
Have students:
• Think about how to measure
environmental risk.
• Develop a measure based on TRI (and
related) data.
• Consider how SRI funds compete.
Case Challenges
• Dealing with lots of data.
• Summarizing data into a single
measure, score or grade.
• Weighing absolute versus intensity
measures.
• Adding toxicity and exposure data
(RSEI).
Student Feedback
• First draft too ambiguous for some students.
• They were intimidated by the TRI data
subset.
• Those that dealt with the data thought it was
difficult to aggregate by company.
• Other data sources presented data by
company but not in enough detail.
• Liked adding toxicity and exposure aspects.
My Feedback
• Case and data did foster thinking in some
students.
• TRI by itself is too difficult for most MBAs
– Too low of an educationtoeffort ratio
– Needs company level aggregation tool
• DUNS Numbers are not easy to acquire.
• RSEI data is appealing because it is closer
to our intuition about risk (human harm).
Next Steps
• Rewrite/edit case.
– Consider more instructions or direction.
• Include subset of RSEI data.
• Next cases possible topics
– Risk measures and performance
– How to report releases to shareholders
– Compare data to what companies report and/or
how they market themselves as green.
– Ecoefficiency using trends in releases.
Conclusions
• Sustainability is growing area in MBA
programs so SRI cases are needed.
• Despite business focus on climate change
and carbon, chemical releases are still
important.
• TRI needs to be supplemented with other
data to be an efficient MBA tool.
– Firm aggregation
– Toxicity and exposure
Conclusions 2
• TRI (and related data sources)
challenge MBAs to go beyond
packaged cases emerging trend.
• Very useful in making students think
about risk and risk measures.
• Useful in linking firm value to non
financial measures.
Sharing/Dissemination
Have proposed sessions to share sustainability
materials and curriculum ideas at:
• AACSB (Association to Advance
Collegiate Schools of Business) July 2009.
• FMA (Financial Management Association)
October 2009.
• Discussed with Aspen Institute Center for
Business Education (no formal proposal).
Thank you!
John Byrd
john.byrd@ucdenver.edu