Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company (KKR), a famous buyout firm which stars in the book, “The Barbarians at the Gate“, is making headway to establish standards to measure environmental impact in the companies it owns. KKR is partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, to create these measures.

According to the press release, the partnership between KKR and EDF is “aimed at creating measurement tools of environmental performance across several areas, from energy efficiency and greenhouse-gas emissions to water consumption and containment of toxic substances across all of its businesses.” If you’re interested, you can read the entire press release.

I recently wrote about Apple’s efforts to measure its environmental impact, and I think this is highly related. I think it would be fantastic if each industry could agree on a certain set of measures for their environmental AND social impacts. I think this is a step in a right direction for business in general and I’m excited to see more industry leaders like KKR take a stance on environmental and social issues. I bet other private equity firms will follow KKR’s lead.