The need to protect environment and conserve natural resources has driven industrial to create environmental sustainability. Environmental effects is now become primary concern of many business of how to manage them effectively and efficiently. Companies are now shifting rapidly from a strategy of regulatory compliance to one of proactive environmental management. This kind of thinking has gone through three stages: 1. the widespread business practice in the 1960s and 1970s of coping with environmental crises as they occurred and of attempting to control the resulting damage. 2. The reactive mode of government environmental regulations and minimizing the cost of compliance. 3. The proactive environment strategy through which corporations began to anticipate the environmental effects of their operations.
Proactive environmental management includes combination of five major approaches:
- Waste minimization and prevention. It requires the prevention of pollution rather than the control of wastes at the end of the pipeline, through new approaches of production or technology.
- Demand side management. It is an approach to pollution prevention that originated in the utility industry.
- Design for environment. The objective is reducing reprocessing costs and returns products to market more quickly and economically.
- Product stewardship. It is a practice that reduces environmental risks or problems resulting from design, manufacturing, distribution, use, or disposal of products.
- Full-cost (environmental) accounting. This method identifies and quantifies environmental performance costs for the product, process, or project.
Corporations that do not adopt proactive approaches to environmental management will simply not be competitive in the global economy of 21st century. Thus, pollution prevention must be adopted for all-small, medium, large corporations, to satisfy customers’ needs, saves money, and profitable business opportunities. Governments, universities, environmental partnerships, and industry association must also work together to seek solutions for the environment problems.
1 comment:
A lot of professionals are now taking up environmental management training as they are aware that lot of companies or possible clients out there are more into environmental aware projects nowadays. Which is a good thing of course.
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