MapEcos is a collaborative website designed to provide an evenhanded view of industrial environmental performance -- particularly pollution -- and the steps facilities are taking to limit their environmental impacts and benefit their stakeholders.  This guidebook site provides supporting information and documentation for MapEcos.

We believe MapEcos is the first website that combines information on pollution with information on how firms are managing and reducing this pollution. In other words, we think we are the first to tell both sides of the story. 

Our information on industrial pollution comes from the US Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). MapEcos shows all of the facilities that reported to the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory in 2005 (the most recent year for which data re available).

Our information about how managers are improving their facility's performance comes from the facility managers themselves.  We have asked (via email) a representative from each of over 20,000 facilities to tell us about their environmental operations, and we encouraged them to post this information on MapEcos.  Click here to find out how your facility can participate.

Users can search for facilities by name, corporate ownership, industry, and emissions level.  They can also find the top emitters in any county or state.  They can go to a particular location (address, city, or zip code) or just browse the map.

For each facility, we provide information about emissions, the hazard scores for these emissions, and comparison information about trends and emissions from other comparable facilities.  Each facility also includes an "operations" tab which displays all of the data about a facility's environmental operations that managers chose to divulge.