Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Corporate environmental management in the 1990s
Business interacts with a wide range of parties (Figure 3.1). Satisfying the investors
and shareholders is at present the driving force; the adoption of environmental
management implies concern for a wider range of stakeholders: the public, bystanders,
employees, consumers, the regional and global environment. Environmental
management must address its objectives within the context of company practices
(e.g. if at all possible it should not slow completion schedules) (Seldner and Cottrel,
1994). As its value is proven, those practices may be modified to help environmental
management. ‘Company’, ‘firm’ or ‘business’ is used in this chapter, but
environmental management, eco-audit and environmental management systems are
also practised by government departments, city administrations, etc.
The tasks of a business environmental manager include:
♦
education of employees to be aware of environmental issues;
♦
updating management on relevant environmental regulation, laws and issues;
♦
selecting specialists and checking that environmental management tasks
contracted out to consultants have been satisfactorily conducted and are properly
acted upon;
♦
ensuring waste management is satisfactory;
♦
avoiding legal costs, reducing insurance premiums, risk and hazard assessment;
♦
if need be correcting mistakes of the past.
FIGURE 3.1 Corporate environmental management: the parties involved
Sources: Partly based on Royston (1978a:7, Fig. 3); Hunt and Johnson (1995:69, Fig. 4.1)

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A typical definition of business environmental management would be: ‘efforts
to minimize the negative environmental impact of the firm’s products throughout
their life cycle’ (Klassen and McLaughlin, 1996:119). The range of tasks is so
wide, and involves working with so many people or bodies outside the company,
that ‘environmental co-ordinator’ might be a better term.
If business fails to adopt environmental management in a serious fashion there
will be little progress, for, as Hawken (1993) noted, corporations are Earth’s dominant
institutions—many corporations have earnings in excess of those of most developing
countries, and some command more riches than some developed nations.
Governments are often lobbied and prevailed upon to do what national business,
MNCs or TNCs want. Big business often has better access to information, resources
and skills than poor nations, and may have greater stability for year-to-year planning
than some governments.
For the last ten years there has been an increasing flow of books on
environmental management and sustainable development for business (e.g. Elkington
and Burke, 1989; Davis, 1991; Sadgrove, 1992; Schmidheiny, 1992; Smith, 1992;
Allenby and Richards, 1994; Hutchinson and Hutchinson, 1997). This literature may
be subdivided into:
♦
greening of business (often by sector, e.g. tourism management and
environment);
♦
environmental management for sustainable development of business;
♦
green corporate environmental management;
♦
total quality management/environmental management systems;
♦
eco-audit;
♦
impact assessment, hazard and risk assessment;
♦
green business ethics;
♦
green marketing, labelling, life-cycle assessment;
♦
recycling and waste disposal;
♦
health and safety;
♦
environmentally sound investment and funding;
♦
environmental law and business.
By 1992 the chemical industry in developed countries was spending an
estimated 3 to 4 per cent of its sales income per annum on environment, health and
safety in the USA alone: that constituted about US$10 billion a year (Greeno and
Robinson, 1992:231). Spending is rapidly increasing. With accidents like the Exxon
Valdez costing over US$2 billion it is easy to see why.