World Resources 1994-95: A Guide to the Global Environment, People and the Environment, Chapter 12, "Industry", World Resources Institute, 1994, p 217+. Reprinted with permission.

The section on toxification was written by Dr. Robert Ayres, Sandoz Professor of Environmental Management at the European Institute of Business Administration in Fontainebleau, France, and by Allen Hammond of the World Resources staff. The section on sustainable industrial practice was written by contributing editor Gregory Mock.

Table of Contents

TOXIFICATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT BY INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY

Toxicity and the Environment

Assessing Industrial Releases

Looking to the Future

TOWARD SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES

The Green Factor

Initial Steps toward Clean Industry

Green Design

Industrial Ecology

Greening the Marketplace

Managing Change

Chapter 12. Industry

A requirement for development in any country is a viable industrial base a prime source of the goods and services, employment, and national wealth that sustain economies. However, industrial activities, including mining, are directly responsible for much of the pollution that degrades the environment. They also affect the environment by shaping consumption into a resource-intensive pattern.

Industrial processes, characteristically, alter the natural flow of materials. Today's industrial flows are immense and often disruptive to local environments. Environmental degradation can occur when natural resources are extracted or processed, and when end products are used or discarded. (See Chapter 1, Natural Resource Consumption.) For some toxic substances such as heavy metals, the global industrial flow already exceeds the natural flow. In areas polluted as a result of industrial activity, concentrations of toxic substances often exceed the levels normally found in soil, waterways, and sediment. When toxic substances accumulate in the environment and in food chains, they can profoundly disrupt biological processes.

Industrial processes also alter the physical and chemical composition of materials, introducing novel substances into the environment. More than 50,000 different chemical substances are produced annually. Some, such as many halogenated chemicals, can be toxic or carcinogenic. And some, such as polychlorinated biphenyls, are long-lived and can be stored in living tissue, especially fat. They tend to concentrate as they pass through the food chain from grazers to predator species.

In addition to their direct toxic effects, materials from industrial processes can have dangerous indirect effects when they react with the environment. Inorganic mercury, for example, is converted by certain anaerobic bacteria to organic (methylated) forms that can accumulate in freshwater and marine food chains. It was methyl mercury that caused Minimata disease, a sometimes fatal neurological disorder first observed among birds, cats, and fishermen living on the shores of Japan's Minimata Bay. To cite another example, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are extremely inert and unreactive until broken up by ultraviolet radiation in the stratosphere, release atomic chlorine that degrades the Earth's protective ozone layer.

In short, the current pattern of industrial activity altering the natural flow of materials and introducing novel chemicals into the environment on a vast scale is toxifying the environment, a term that, as used here, encompasses a wide range of direct and indirect effects. Some analysts fear that the toxic burden is nearing a threshold beyond which it will destabilize ecosystems and alter planetwide nutrient cycles (1) (2). What is certain is that long-lived toxic materials will continue to accumulate and the risk of widespread environmental damage will continue to grow until industrial patterns change.

Any serious effort to pursue sustainable global development thus must confront the formidable task of transforming industrial practices. Clearly, if industry is to provide for today's and tomorrow's needs without undue environmental degradation the goal of sustainable development new processes will be needed that use less virgin material, produce markedly less pollution or waste per unit of product, and minimize indirect environmental effects. Another consideration critical to sustainable development is the overall metabolism of industrial activity; this includes the products industry creates and their ultimate use and disposal.

Fortunately, there has been a distinct heightening of environmental awareness among leading companies in many industries since the mid-1980s. Worldwide, more than 1,100 firms have endorsed the Business Charter for Sustainable Development, setting forth broad environmental principles for corporate conduct (3) (4). The chemical industry's Responsible Care program, which started in Canada, has now spread throughout the world. In the United States alone, more than 1,100 companies have publicly committed themselves to the Environmental Protection Agency's (U.S. EPA's) 33/50 program, which has set voluntary targets for reducing discharges of potentially toxic pollutants by 1995 (5). Meanwhile, a host of so-called green products catering to newfound consumer sensitivity to the environment has appeared.

In some cases, this new regard for the environment does not extend much beyond looking green, capitalizing on the latest consumer fad, or anticipating the next regulatory hurdle. But for an increasing if still small number of companies of all sizes, reducing the environmental impact of their extraction and production processes and of the products themselves as they are used and discarded, has become a matter of strategic importance. In fact, for some of these companies, environmental stewardship has become a business opportunity rather than simply an expensive burden a chance to improve both company image and production efficiency at the same time, with increased competitiveness as the result.

In a few well-publicized cases, this convergence of environmental and business goals has already brought tangible benefits, with companies saving tens of millions of dollars in material, energy, and waste disposal costs. More important, these cases have paved the way for the first serious consideration by business of the idea of sustainable industrial practice.

Forward-looking companies have begun to realize that minimizing overall waste and emissions is a key to maximizing productivity and thus to surviving in the marketplace of the future. This realization implies a profound change in business culture and practice what some have boldly called a second industrial revolution one that views industrial products and processes as part of a larger industrial ecosystem, eventually forming a nearly closed system of material flows.

TOXIFICATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT BY INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY

Few would argue that current industrial practice is sustainable. The mass of industrial materials used, and the waste generated, is staggering. In the United States alone, industry devours nearly 2.7 billion metric tons of raw material a year, not counting stone, sand, and gravel. (See Chapter 1, Natural Resource Consumption. ) In the extraction process, U.S. industry creates 6.9 billion metric tons of solid waste annually (6) , in addition to about 7.7 billion metric tons of solid waste from metal and mineral processing (7). Each year it also emits a huge quantity of gas and liquid pollutants, including more than 120 million metric tons of conventional air pollutants and more than 4.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. (See Chapter 23, Atmosphere and Climate, Tables 23.1, 23.5, and 23.6.)

Toxicity and the Environment

Exposure to toxic materials can cause acute illness or death, as the 1984 Bhopal tragedy in India painfully illustrated. Low levels of exposure may impair development in the young. Neurological problems, for example, have been associated with low-level lead poisoning. Chemicals in the food chain that accumulate in the body can lead to reproductive failures such as those caused by DDT in hawks and eagles. Toxic compounds can induce mutagenesis (gene alteration) whose effects are felt in future generations. Toxic materials may also lead or contribute to chronic disease or altered metabolic activity resulting in reduced capability or productivity, such as human lung damage caused by high levels of sulfur dioxide or curtailed crop growth caused by exposure to ozone.

Environmental toxification can also result from chemical imbalances within an organism, an ecosystem, or a geophysical system. Excessive nutrients, for example, are credited with the increasing occurrence of algae blooms in estuaries and enclosed seas in many parts of the world. Blooms, by exhausting dissolved oxygen in the water or releasing toxins, have in turn led to widespread fish kills (8). (See Chapter 10, Water, Toxic Tides.)

Sometimes environmental toxification arises from industrial emissions of substances not normally regarded as toxic. As already mentioned, when CFCs break up in the stratosphere and degrade the Earth's protective ozone layer, it intensifies the ultraviolet flux to which zooplankton and fish in shallow surface waters near Antarctica are exposed during part of the year. Another well-known example is urban smog. Unburned hydrocarbons from gasoline and nitrogen oxides from high-temperature combustion combine in the presence of sunlight to form ozone, a reactive form of oxygen that is damaging to plants and, if breathed directly, to animals (including people).

A more controversial example of indirect environmental damage is acid precipitation stemming from sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions during fuel combustion. These gaseous oxides react with water in the air or on the surface of small particles to produce sulfuric and nitric acids. Acid precipitation acidifies soil unless it is heavily buffered. The soil, in turn, can release otherwise immobilized metals both naturally occurring aluminum, whose ions are toxic to plants, and heavy metals, often spread from smelters and in fly ash from coal burning. This sequence appears to have contributed to the degradation ( Waldsterben ) of Germany's Black Forest and many of the wooded slopes of the Alps. As trees die, topsoil erodes and can deposit heavy metals into stream and estuary sediment. Some metals such as mercury, arsenic, and cadmium are mobilized from sediment and converted to soluble form by bacteria, increasing the risk that they will enter the food chain. Metals can also become rapidly oxidized and converted to soluble form when sediment is dredged and exposed to oxygen (9) (10).

Large accumulations of heavy metals reside in the soils and sediments in some areas, the legacy of many forms of past industrial activity. Lead arsenate was heavily used as an insecticide, especially in apple orchards; arsenic is still widely used as a herbicide and in wood preservatives along with copper and chromium compounds. Mercury compounds were used for pigments, antimildew and antibarnacle paints, to control fungal diseases in plants, and to protect seeds from rot. Historically, mercury has been used in very large quantities (especially in South America) to refine gold and silver ores, a practice that continues among wildcat miners in the region today.

Tetraethyl and tetramethyl lead have been used as octane enhancers in gasoline for half a century (leaded gasoline is still common in much of the world). White lead paint was widely used to protect wood for more than a century, and red lead is still used to protect steel from rust. Zinc-based compounds were also widely used for pigments, as were chromium (chrome yellow) and cadmium (red and orange). The yellow paint used on streets and roads in the United States and the paint used on some construction equipment are chrome based. Zinc oxide (with cadmium traces) is used extensively in tires. Chromium compounds continue to be used for tanning leather and as an algicide for commercial air conditioners. Copper sulfate was, and still is, widely used to protect grape vines from fungus infections (11). Table 12.1 gives information on the consumptive uses of heavy metals in the United States in 1980.

Soft coal, whose ash contains trace quantities of many toxic metals, continues to be burned widely in many urban areas. Phosphate fertilizers containing cadmium also continue to be widely used.

Global anthropogenic emissions of many materials, including sulfur and nitrogen, now rival or exceed the flow of these materials from natural sources (12). (See Chapter 23, Atmosphere and Climate, Table 23.5.) The emissions of toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury, copper, cadmium, arsenic, chromium, and zinc exceed natural sources by a factor of 10 or more. (See Table 12.2.) Some analysts see such comparisons as evidence that industrial activity could overwhelm many natural ecosystems (13) (14).

Assessing Industrial Releases

According to the U.S. EPA, emissions of more than 300 toxic materials in the United States amounted to about 2.2 million metric tons in 1991 (15). Each year, data are reported factory by factory and made public in the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The TRI totals do not include hazardous materials that are incorporated in products (many of which end up in the environment), reports from nearly one third of U.S. factories, or emissions of all materials likely to be toxic. The TRI figures also do not distinguish among materials of widely varying toxicity.

When TRI data are scrutinized, additional questions about the inventory arise. Independent estimates for a number of toxic materials, based on calculations of materials balances for the primary industrial processes involved, suggest that TRI figures may understate U.S. emissions or releases for some important toxins by as much as a factor of 10. (See Table 12.3.) The apparent discrepancy may result from reporting rules that do not account for hazardous material in nonhazardous waste streams or in certain commercial products used by small businesses and households. Thus the TRI, though the world's most detailed database of industrial emissions, must be approached cautiously; at best, its data represent lower-bound estimates.

The United States, as the world's largest producer and consumer of industrial materials, is also probably the world's top producer of toxic wastes. Although the Soviet Union was once a strong contender for that distinction, precise comparison between countries is not possible, because few release information on toxic emissions and the industrial processes that produce them, and many do not collect information on toxic (or other) emissions at all. Process-specific data, where it does exist, is often not published for fear of revealing proprietary information. As a result, in most countries, citizens and even government officials have little reliable information about the toxic substances emitted by industrial activity within their borders. Likewise, neither governments nor international development organizations have a way to gauge the environmental effects of industrial development plans.

Some information of global interest can be gleaned from the TRI, however. A study by the World Bank compared emissions as recorded in the TRI and other U.S. EPA databases with U.S. census data on manufacturing activity for a huge sample of industrial facilities approximately 13,000 factories in all regions of the United States. The result is an index of pollution intensity (the environmental risk from industrial emissions per unit of manufacturing activity) for each of 1,500 industrial sectors or product categories.

The study created four separate indexes: direct risk to humans; direct risk to aquatic organisms (aquatic organisms are generally more sensitive to toxins than mammals); heavy metals (which, by accumulating in living tissue and food chains, can pose a long-term risk); and conventional pollutants. Manufacturing activity was measured in units of a product's dollar value and data were combined in standard economic sectors for ease of comparison with economic data (16). By applying U.S.-based intensities to sectoral economic data for other countries, the World Bank study makes it possible to estimate an approximate lower bound for toxic emissions in these countries. (See Table 12.4.)

Table 12.4 Lower-Bound Estimates of Annual Toxic Releases (million metric tons

Source: The World Bank, unpublished data (The World Bank, Washington, D.C., May 1993).

Note: A complete description of the Industrial Pollution Projection System used for these estimates will be published as a working paper by the Environment and Infrastructure Division of the World Bank Policy Research Department.

Estimating releases from other countries remains problematic because manufacturing practices can vary significantly. For instance, because there are no phosphate ores in western Europe, the German chemical industry does not include a phosphate rock-processing sector, a major source of toxic emissions in the United States. Preliminary results from additional work by the World Bank suggest that emissions estimates may be too low as TRI data reflect post-treatment emissions, and developing countries tend to have less efficient equipment and practices (17). But in the absence of reliable data, the estimates provide some information on the environmental burden accumulating in each country. It is noteworthy that estimated emissions of heavy metals in Japan are higher than those in the United States, reflecting a metal-intensive manufacturing sector, and that two developing countries, China and India, also have larger estimated emissions than a number of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, pointing to significant industrial activity.

Looking to the Future

Considering the already heavy environmental risks posed by current industrial practices, any significant expansion could become ecologically untenable. Yet such an expansion is what global development may imply, as the global industrial economy expands and as developing countries supply unmet needs and rising expectations (and incomes). Within the next 60 years, the global economy is projected to grow fivefold (18). In such a world, just holding the present possibly unsustainable environmental burden constant would require cutting the current environmental impact per unit of gross national product by 80 percent (19).

TOWARD SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES

The case for clean industry is easy to make on ecological or humanitarian grounds. But there are also compelling economic reasons for industry to embrace sustainable practices. For one, the cost of cleaning up pollution from disposing of toxic waste to installing and maintaining control devices that treat harmful emissions is already high and climbing in most industrial countries (20). In the United States, in fact, pollution abatement costs are rising faster than the growth rate of industrial production. (See Figure 12.1.) Disposal costs for some toxic wastes have risen as high as $10,000 per ton. U.S. manufacturers spend more than $40 billion annually on pollution control (21) (22).

Adopting cleaner processes can not only save on pollution control costs but also make manufacturing more efficient, thus increasing profits. And by converting a higher percentage of raw materials into useful products, clean processes can bring savings on material as well as waste disposal. For example, with computer modeling, Dow Chemical Corporation was able to refine the synthesis of agricultural chemicals at its Pittsburg, California, plant, cutting the need for a key reactant by some 80 percent, eliminating 1,000 metric tons of waste per year, and saving $8 million annually (23). Greater efficiency, combined with less waste disposal and lower liability costs, forms a powerful economic argument for cleaner processes.

The Green Factor

The rise in consumer consciousness about the environment is another factor influencing businesses to adopt sustainable practices. Indeed, evidence of environmentally responsible behavior has become an essential element of modern business success. The emergence of the so-called green factor has prompted businesses to realize the significant market potential for environmentally friendly products everything from mercury-free batteries to recycled paper (24).

Along with this heightened sensitivity to environmental concerns has come increasing pressure from local community groups, environmental organizations, and government regulators for industries to reduce their pollutant emissions. Industries are being asked to make full public disclosures of toxic emissions for each facility they operate (25).

In 1986, the United States enacted a right-to-know law that required industries to quantify their emissions of the 313 toxic substances covered by the TRI. The specter of public accounting prompted business managers, many of whom had no overall picture of company emissions, to rethink their operations (26) (27). Despite limitations in the TRI, it has become an important bench mark for measuring companies' commitment to cleaning up and thus a powerful public relations tool for use against reluctant industries. Similar toxics reporting laws are now on the books or under active consideration in other countries, including Canada, Australia, and India. The European Community is formulating a multinational toxics inventory (28) (29) (30).

The demand for full disclosure along with growing public concern has coaxed many companies to expand their view of who has a legitimate stake in their operations. Today, for some leading companies, stakeholders include not just stockholders, lenders, and regulators but also employees, customers, suppliers, trade associations, community and environmental groups, the public at large, and in the widest sense, future generations and the biosphere as a w hole (31) (32). In response to these numerous stakeholders, a growing number of companies have set public goals for pollution reduction and are adopting some type of pollution prevention program. Several major transnational corporations have developed ambitious cleanup targets (33).

For instance, 3M Company, which operates in more than 20 countries, has pledged to reduce all hazardous and nonhazardous emissions to air, water, and land by 90 percent by the year 2000 (using 1987 emissions as a base), and to cut all waste generation in half by 2000 (34). To achieve these goals, 3M has begun developing closed-loop and zero-waste processes (35). Monsanto Company recently achieved its goal of reducing toxic air emissions by 90 percent and has now committed to cutting all toxic releases by 70 percent (from a 1990 base) by 1995 (36) (37).

The willingness of some industrial firms to extend their cleanup efforts beyond mere compliance with minimum legal standards is an important beginning. Widespread adoption of this attitude, partly as a result of educational efforts, will be an important part of any substantive movement toward sustainable practices. Without the active participation of business, overall progress will be difficult, despite increasingly strict environmental regulations.

One advantage to business of a proactive approach is that it can begin to set the agenda of industrial transformation rather than have the pace and direction of change dictated by regulatory agencies or other outside influences. In this way, it can manage change in a manner that makes better economic sense, using the green factor itself to maintain or achieve a competitive edge in present and future markets (38).

Initial Steps toward Clean Industry

Industries striving for sustainable practices invariably begin by accepting the central tenet of modern pollution prevention: reducing waste or pollution at the source is inherently good business because it is more efficient and less costly than attempting to clean up pollution once it is produced (39) (40) (41). This philosophy differs markedly from traditional approaches to waste management and pollution control, which center on end-of-pipe technologies such as stack scrubbers, incinerators, and water treatment facilities that merely remove or detoxify wastes without fundamentally affecting the industrial processes that produce them. Pollution prevention adopts a front-end approach, attacking the source of waste by adjusting process technologies and controls, cleaning and handling practices, product design and packaging, and even transportation practices. Zero-emission or zero-waste processes are the goal of this approach. Complete pollution prevention is probably an impossible goal because of the inevitability of technical limitations and human error (42) (43).

The pollution prevention approach follows a natural hierarchy of waste management options: reduce waste at the source; reuse or recycle waste that is produced, preferably on site and directly back into the production process; or treat waste that cannot be prevented or recycled with the latest technology to detoxify, remove, or destroy it. Waste should be disposed of or released into the environment only as a last resort (44) (45).

Progress in pollution prevention comes through a variety of different routes. Simple measures that conserve materials and avoid spoilage or needless contamination often help reduce waste at little cost in time and energy. For instance, many industries have found that a simple step like redesigning cleaning processes can both save water and reduce the volume of wastewater generated (46) (47) (48) (49).

Second-order measures involve substituting more benign substances for toxic materials or redesigning manufacturing processes to recycle or eliminate a given waste. This approach has been widely employed to cut emissions of volatile organic solvents used extensively in manufacturing. Many businesses have begun capturing and recycling these solvents back into manufacturing processes. Others have phased out solvents altogether by substituting water-based processes. Microelectronics manufacturers on several continents, for example, have managed to replace CFCs and other ozone-depleting solvents with water-based cleaning operations, and car manufacturers are phasing in water-based paints in their shops (50) (51).

New technologies such as sophisticated chemical sensors and computerized process controls also have an important role to play in cleaning up industrial processes. By monitoring process conditions and precisely regulating the flow of reactants or energy, these technologies can increase efficiency and minimize waste (52). By modifying manufacturing processes and improving process controls, Intel, a major U.S. computer chip maker, decreased the amount of hazardous waste requiring treatment and disposal by about 95 percent between 1985 and 1993, even as annual sales increased by 500 percent (53).

To support these changes on the factory floor, companies must change the method they use to measure waste and account for waste cleanup in their budgets. Most companies do not have a comprehensive view of their waste streams where the constituent waste components originate and exactly how much each waste costs to manage (54) (55). Simply assembling this information often reveals opportunities to develop a more efficient operation.

For the sake of convenience, expenses for a variety of waste treatment, disposal, and administrative functions have too often been lumped together under the general category of environmental management, so that there is little accountability on the production line for the cost of pollutants produced there. In effect, this practice hides the true cost of products and processes from production managers and undervalues the advantages of many pollution prevention strategies. Cost-accounting procedures that charge specific waste producers within a company for the pollutants they create provide internal incentive for waste reduction and enable managers to evaluate more accurately the economic benefits and costs of process adjustments (56) (57).

Green Design

Introducing environmental consciousness into the design phase of products and processes is one of the most effective methods of pollution prevention. Decisions made during the design stage set parameters for the manufacturing process and ultimately determine the kind of waste produced. Green design marks the point where the difficult transition away from current practice begins in earnest (58) (59) (60).

Traditionally, industrial design has focused on maximum product performance and ease of production at minimum cost, ignoring the overall environmental impact of raw material acquisition, production processes, and the product itself. The goal of green design, by contrast, is to minimize the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle without compromising its performance. As with other aspects of pollution prevention, green design sees environmental friendliness as an opportunity, not a constraint (61).

Green design can be aided by an exercise called life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA seeks to quantify or at least assess the total environmental burden (including energy expenditure) of procuring raw materials for a product and manufacturing, distributing, using, and disposing of it (62). From this vantage point, designers can identify opportunities for reducing a product's impact, for example, where resource use and waste production might be minimized during manufacture or where the product might be reused or recycled at the end of its lifespan. Such opportunities might include reducing the use of toxic materials during production, including recycled material in the product, using less of a given material to perform the same function, increasing the energy efficiency of the final product, or extending the product lifespan by substituting more durable materials or design (63) (64).

While tradeoffs with nonenvironmental considerations are inevitable, the results of green design can be significant. Polaroid Corporation used it in creating a new high-definition film in 1991. Designers were able to substitute less toxic materials in the manufacturing process, cutting toxic waste by about one third without sacrificing quality standards (65).

Green design also gives special consideration to the fate of a product at the end of its life. Some products can be designed for disassembly or breakdown and sub sequent use in other manufacturing processes, thereby keeping the materials within the industrial loop. Other products can be designed for composting or some other means of disposal that is safe and may itself provide environmental benefits (66).

In some cases, manufacturers of durable goods such as cars, major appliances, and business machines have already begun to design their products for ease of disassembly or for direct remanufacture. Often they use fewer parts or materials and label components such as plastics for easy separation prior to recycling (67).

Industrial Ecology

Industrial sustainability may not be achieved by individual companies acting in isolation. One alternative approach is to practice pollution prevention, green design, and closed-loop materials cycling on a systemwide basis. Obviously, this would require close connection among suppliers, producers, distributors, users, and waste recovery or disposal entities. The approach, which is known as industrial ecology, seeks to structure the world's industrial base along the lines of natural ecosystems, whose cyclical flows of material and energy are both efficient and sustainable (68) (69) (70) (71) (72).

Industrial ecology eschews the traditional linear model of industrial production in which waste is considered inevitable. In a natural ecosystem, there is no real waste. Resources are conserved, for example, when one organism uses another's byproducts or decay as food. Similarly, an industrial ecosystem would consist of complex food webs that allow spent products, waste, and byproducts to flow between industries (and consumers) in a multidimensional system of recycling and reuse. Incorporating waste streams into the manufacture of new products would become an integral part of the industrial process (73) (74) (75).

Industrial ecology redefines waste as a starting material for another industrial process. The idea is that processes can be designed as much for the useful byproducts they produce as for the primary products (76). The results could even be counterintuitive for example, a process producing a large quantity of easily used waste might be preferable to a more efficient process producing a small amount of waste for which there is little use (77).

All this is theory. In practice, constructing the recycling infrastructure and consumer culture to support industrial ecosystems will prove challenging. One place where this challenge has been met, albeit on a limited scale, is the town of Kalundborg, Denmark. Here, industrial waste and waste process heat are exchanged in a cooperative arrangement among a power plant, an oil refinery, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, a plasterboard factory, a cement producer, farmers, and the utility that provides residential heat for local residents. The arrangement, which has been financially beneficial to all parties, is a working model of a small industrial ecosystem (78) (79).

One of the difficulties industries could face in striving for a closed-loop cycle is that many materials are dissipated. Products such as brake shoes, lubricant, pesticides, and paint are all essentially impossible to collect and reclaim as they are currently used (80).

Even where materials are reused, the cycle may not be truly closed. Certain types of paper and plastic are difficult to reprocess for their original purpose. Reclaimed material tends to cascade down the industrial food web to progressively more limited uses until it can only be burned for energy or discarded (81).

Greening the Marketplace

Success in transforming industry through new technology, innovative design, and better systems management will depend in large part on realigning global economic markets the major determinant of most business behavior to support the green revolution. This means that the prices placed on products must be changed to reflect the full environmental cost of their production (82) (83) (84).

Current markets often offer little incentive for environmentally responsible behavior. Companies and consumers are frequently insulated from the direct costs of the environmental degradation their activities incur. Typically, these costs in the form of smog, groundwater contamination, pesticide residue, acid rain, loss of biological diversity are borne by individuals not directly responsible for them or by the global community at large. When companies are made to internalize the costs called full-cost pricing then market forces will begin to penalize environmentally harmful practices and reward benign ones (85) (86).

While the logic of full-cost pricing is simple, bringing it about on a global scale is not. Industry might help realign markets by adopting environmental accounting procedures that highlight the cost of pollution and by practicing pollution prevention to increase efficiency. But industry's efforts will be fruitless unless there is also government involvement in adjusting tax and regulatory policies to intervene in markets on behalf of the environment (87) (88) (89).

Many policy mechanisms are available to government to prompt industry to internalize environmental costs. Taxes can be imposed on pollution emissions, energy consumption, and the use of virgin material or toxic substances. A complementary strategy is eliminating government subsidies that impede environmental goals. Subsidies, which range from tax incentives for extractive activities such as oil and gas production, mining, and logging to artificially low charges for energy or water, can lead to overuse of resources and serious environmental contamination (90) (91).

Another, more indirect scheme is emissions trading, where a limited pool of credits are exchanged on the open market to reward those who emit less. This sort of scheme is favored by companies because it allows them to decide on their own how to achieve environmental objectives at minimum cost (92) (93).

In addition to economic instruments, governments can influence markets through environmental regulation. Current regulations often take the form of command and control, that is, they specify emission standards or disposal practices for toxic materials and prohibit certain polluting activities. Such regulations, while effective within their sphere, focus attention on specific pollutants in isolation, prompting investment in end-of-the-pipe pollution control rather than changes in industrial practice to realize the overall goal of pollution prevention (94) (95) (96). A few governments are now expanding their efforts to embrace the pollution prevention ethic without abandoning the command- and control-approach altogether.

In some cases, this has meant greater emphasis on cooperative arrangements with industry to coax it into reducing pollution beyond levels required by statute. The success of the U.S. EPA's 33/50 program, which has resulted in voluntary pledges from companies to reduce emissions of 17 priority pollutants by a total of nearly 354 million pounds by 1995, is seen as a signal that a less adversarial relationship with industry can sometimes be practical and cost-effective (97) (98) (99) (100). It should be noted, however, that the pledged reductions will probably be obtained by a variety of methods, not just pollution prevention.

Environmental product policy has also become an area of great interest to the international community over the last several years, particularly in Europe, where a variety of statutes and voluntary covenants have been put in place to encourage recycling of containers and packaging materials and to promote green design. Perhaps the most visible and controversial example is Germany's packaging law, which holds product manufacturers directly responsible for collecting and recycling the packaging they use. The law aims for a recycling rate of 80 percent of all packaging materials by 1995, a target which is admittedly ambitious and of uncertain feasibility. Japan has initiated an ambitious recycling program as well, targeting a 60 percent recovery rate for paper, aluminum, glass, steel cans, and batteries by 1995 (101).

Yet another way governments have sought to influence market behavior is by setting and enforcing standards for ecolabeling. The goal is to employ labels to inform consumers about the environmental impact of the products they purchase. Environmental labeling programs are under way in Canada, Japan, India, several European nations, and (in the private sector) in the United States (102) (103).

Managing Change

The goal of industrial sustainability entails more than just a transformation of technology and its applications, experts warn. It involves, more fundamentally, a revolution in corporate culture that is, in the philosophy business uses to make decisions. Indeed, the limiting factor in most pollution prevention efforts to date and the key constraint in accomplishing the transition to sustainable practices is not technology but management practices (104) (105) (106).

In other words, the transformation to sustainability must begin in the boardroom, where the management attitudes, organizational structures, and performance incentives are all shaped. Without a change in corporate culture to embrace the prevention ethic and the strategic value of sustainable practices, any change in technology will be largely reactive and based on short-term compliance (107) (108) (109).

The corporate changes required by the goal of sustainability will probably come about slowly. The proactive approach of pollution prevention, in which environmental criteria are part of each business decision and environmental performance is rewarded on a par with production performance, is likely to develop much more slowly than the technological transformation itself (110) (111). In fact, real progress could take a decade or more. Once the fundamental change in business thinking is made, however, progress is expected to be more rapid and profound (112) (113).

Will such gradual change be enough to prevent rapid environmental decline and accommodate world development in the interim? Few experts hazard a guess, but most agree that the momentum toward transforming industrial practice is building steadily. The strategic value of operating with the future in mind is beginning at least in a few companies to reshape the conception of what comprises sound business practice (114) (115).

References and Notes

1. Robert U. Ayres, "Toxic Heavy Material Cycle Optimization", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 89 (1992), p. 816.

2. Jerome O. Nriagu, "Global Metal Pollution," Environment, Vol. 32, No. 7 (199), pp. 29-32.

3. Stephen Schmidheiny, Changing Course: A Global Perspective on Development and the Environment (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992), p.6.

4. International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Supporting Companies and Business Organizations (ICC, Paris, 1993), n.p.

5. U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "EPA’s 33/50 Program: Third Progress Update," EPA Report No. 745-R-93-0001 (EPA, Washington, D.C., 1993), p.1.

6. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Screening Survey of Industrial Subtitle D Establishments (EPA, Washington, D.C., 1987), pp. 2-2 and C-8.

7. Robert U. Ayres, Sandoz Professor of Management and the Environment, The European Institute of Business Administration, Fontainebleau, France, 1993 (personal communication).

8. Elliott A. Norse, ed., Global Marine Biological Diversity: A Strategy for Building Conservation into Decision Making (Island Press, Washington, D.C., 1993), pp. 123-127.

9. William M. Stigliani, "Change in Valued ‘Capacities’ of Soil and Sediments as Indicators of Nonlinear and Time-Delayed Environmental Effects," Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1988), pp. 245-307.

10. William M. Stigliani, Peter R. Jaffe, and Stefan Anderberg, "Heay Metal Pollution in the Rhine Basin," Environmental Science and Technology, Vol. 27, No. 5 (1993), pp. 790-792.

11. Op. cit. 1, pp. 815-820.

12. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment, J.T. Houghton, G.J. Jenkins, and J.J. Ephraums, eds. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1990), pp. 30-33.

13. Hardin Tibbs, "Industrial Ecology: An Agenda for Environmental Management," Pollution Prevention Review, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1992), p. 168.

14. Op. cit. 1, pp. 815-816.

15. U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 1991 Toxics Release Inventory (EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Washington, D.C., 1993), p. 15.

16. David Wheeler Mala Hettige, Paul Martin, et al., "The Industrial Pollution Projection System," unpublished paper, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1993.

17. Mala Hettige, Economist, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1993 (personal communication).

18. James Gustave Speth, "The Transition to a Sustainable Society," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 89 (1992), p. 870.

19. Bruce Smart, Beyond Compliance: A New Industry View of the Environment (World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C., 1992), p. 5.

20. C. Kumar N. Patel, "Industrial Ecology," Proceedings of the National Acacemy of Sciences, Vol. 89 (1992), p. 798.

21. Ibid.

22. Op. cit. 3, p. 100.

23. Op. cit. 3, p. 268.

24. Op. cit. 19, pp. 83-96.

25. International Insitute for Sustainable Development (IISD), Coming Clean (IISD, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 1993), pp. 6-9.

26. David Sarokin, Toxic Releases from Multinational Corporations (The Public Data Project, Washington, D.C., 1992), p. 2.

27. "Emissions Zero: Profits One," in Saving the Planet: Environmentally Advantaged Technologies for Economic Growth, a special supplement of Business Week (December 30, 1991), p. 10.

28. Op. cit. 27, p. 9.

29. World Wildlife Fund (WWF), "The Right to Know: The Promise of Low-Cost Public Inventories of Toxic Chemicals," draft report, WWF, Washington, D.C., 1993, pp. 3 and 30.

30. Op. cit. 27, p. 9.

31. Op. cit. 25, p. 13.

32. Op. cit. 3, pp. 10-11.

33. Op. cit. 3, pp. 99-100.

34. Op. cit. 19, p. 15.

35. Richard Renner, Public Relations Counselor, 3M Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1993 (personal communication).

36. Monsanto Company, Environmental Annual Review 1992 (Monsanto, St. Louis, Missouri 1992), p. 18.

37. Monsanto Company Environmental Annual Review 1993 (Monsanto, St. Louis, Missouri, 1993), pp. 16-18.

38. Op. cit. 3, pp. 100-101.

39. Joel Hirschhorn, "The Technological Potential: Pollution Prevention," paper presented at Toward 2000: Environment, Technology, and the New Century, World Resources Institute, Annapolis, Maryland, June 1990.

40. Op. cit. 3, pp. 101-106.

41. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), The Design for the Environment Program: Cleaner Technologies for a Safer Future (EPA, Washington, D.C., n.d.), p.1.

42. Op. cit. 39.

43. Op. cit. 27, pp. 11-18.

44. Op. cit. 19, pp. 12-14.

45. Op. cit. 27, p. 11.

46. Joel Hirschhorn, "Technological Potential in Pollution Prevention," Pollution Prevention, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1991), pp. 21-24.

47. Ann Thayer, "Pollution Reduction," Chemical and Engineering News (November 16, 1992), pp. 35-36.

48. Op. cit. 3, pp. 101-102.

49. Op. cit. 27, pp. 11-15.

50. Op. cit. 3, pp. 102-1-03.

51. Op. cit. 27, pp. 11-15.

52. George Heaton, Robert Repetto, and Rodney Sobin, Transforming Technology: An Agenda for Environmentally Sustainable Growth (World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C., 1991), pp. 17-18.

53. Terry McManus, Manager, Corporate Environmental Affairs, Intel Corporation, Chandler, Arizona, 1993 (personal communication).

54. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Design for the Environment Fact Sheet: Accounting and Insurance Projects; Applications for Pollution Prevention in Financial Professions (EPA, Washington, D.C., 1993), pp. 2-3.

55. Op. cit. 46, p. 27.

56. Op. cit. 54.

57. Op. cit. 46, p. 27.

58. U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), Green Products by Design: Choices for a Cleaner Environment (OTA, Washington, D.C., 1992), p. 3.

59. Op. cit. 41

60. Elizabeth Corcoran, "Thinking Green: Can Environmentalism Be a Strategic Advantage?" Scientific American, Vol. 267, No. 6 (December 1992), pp. 44-45.

61. Op. cit. 58, pp. 35-43.

62. Op. cit. 58, pp. 50-62.

63. James Fava, Frank Consoli, and Richard Dension, "Analysis of Product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Applications," paper presented at the Society for Environmental Toxicology, Europe, Workshop on LCA, Leiden, The Netherlands, December 1991.

64. Op. cit. 58, pp. 37-38.

65. Polaroid Corporation, Polariod Report the Environment, 1991 (Polariod Corporation, Boston, 1992), p. 18.

66. Op. cit. 58, pp. 39-43.

67. Op. cit. 58, pp. 39-42 and 59.

68. Op. cit. 13, pp. 168-170.

69. Report Frosch, "Industrial Ecology: A Philosophical Introduction," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 89 (1992), pp. 800-803.

70. Op cit. 20, pp. 798-799.

71. Op. cit. 58, pp. 54-56.

72. Robert Frosch, "Strategies for Manufacturing," Scientific American, Vol. 261, No. 3 (1989), pp. 144-146.

73. Op. cit. 13, pp. 168-170.

74. Op. cit. 69, pp. 800-801.

75. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), An Introduction to EPA’s Design for the Environment Program, pamphlet (EPA, Washington, D.C., 1993), p. 1.

76. Op. cit. 69, pp. 800-801.

77. Op. cit. 72, p. 149.

78. Op. cit. 13, pp. 171-172.

79. Op. cit. 58, p. 57.

80. Op. cit. 1, pp. 815-820.

81. Op. cit. 69, P. 801.

82. Op. cit. 3, pp. 15-33.

83. Op. cit. 72, pp. 151-152.

84. Op. cit. 18, p. 871.

85. Op. cit. 3, pp. 15-18.

86. Op. cit. 18, p. 871.

87. Op. cit. 3, pp. 15-19.

88. Op. cit. 18, p. 871.

89. Op. cit. 69, pp. 802-803.

90. Op. cit. 3, pp. 21-28.

21. Op. cit. 18, p. 871.

92. Op. cit. 3, pp. 21-28.

93. Op. cit. 18, p. 871.

94. Carol Browner, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator’s Earth Day 1993 Message, pamphlet (EPA, Washington, D.C., 1993), pp. 1-4.

95. Op. cit. 3, pp. 19-21.

96. Op. cit. 18, p. 872.

97. Op. cit. 94.

98. Op. cit. 5.

99. Op. cit. 3, pp. 21-28.

100. Op. cit. 18, p. 872.

101. Op. cit. 58, pp. 67-75.

102. Op. cit. 58, pp. 67-75.

103. Norman Dean, "Life-Cycle Review as a Tool in Standard Setting," in Rethinking the Materials We Use: A New Focus for Pollution Policy, Ken Geiser and Frances H. Irwin, eds., (World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C., 1993), pp. 49-54.

104. Bruce Piasecki, "Industrial Ecology: An Emerging Management Science," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 89 (1992), p. 874.

105. John Ehrenfeld, Director, Technology, Business, and Environment Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993 (personal communication).

106. Op. cit. 39.

107. Op. cit. 104.

108. Op. cit. 39.

109. Op. cit. 105.

110 Op. cit. 105.

111 Hardin Tibbs, Strategic Consultant, Global Business Network, Emeryville, California, 1993 (personal communication).

112. Op. cit. 105.

113. Op. cit. 111.

114. Op. cit. 105.

115. Op. cit. 111.

taken from: http://www.worldbank.org/nipr/work_paper/wri/

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