Industrial ecology—an organizing framework for environmental management

Industrial ecology is a systemic organizing framework for the many facets of environmental management. It views the industrial world as a natural system, embedded in local ecosystems and the global biosphere. It provides a fundamental understanding of the value of modeling the industrial system on ecosystems to achieve sustainable environmental performance. In this article, the author shows how it offers powerful tools of analysis that complement and enhance those offered by such approaches as Total Quality Environmental Management or pollution prevention.     

Making pollution prevention part of the coors culture

This article is about Total Quality Management and its relationship to corporate environmental affairs. As the TQM movement expands, the commitment to continuous quality improvement, customer satisfaction, and collaborative, team-oriented workplaces is finding new applications. Just as the success of Federal Express, AT&T, and other winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award shows that Total Quality Management can transform a business, we also are learning of successes companies are having applying TQM principles to environmental management. Our experience with TQM and environmental management at Coors Brewing Company is in the area of pollution prevention. In addition to our brewing operations, we also operate the country's largest aluminum can manufacturing plant, where we produce 4 billion cans a year, a separate facility that makes the can tops, a glass bottle manufacturing plant, and various support facilities. In all, we have some 7,000 employees, and building a commitment to pollution prevention in an operation of that size requires much more than just adopting quality principles. In this article we show how it also means understanding how those principles will mesh with the corporate culture. What we found is that before TQM can begin its magic, a company must review its own culture to see how problems have traditionally been solved and how challenges have been met.     

Environmentally conscious product design through total quality management

The actions of governments, customers, and competitors are influencing corporate environmental management in unprecedented ways. Market requirements are affecting both revenues and costs in ways that individual firms cannot control. The uncertainty that these new requirements create underscores the critical importance of planning and implementing a systematic approach to the design of products and the processes used to build, ship, support, and recover them. In this article the author shows how Total Quality Management offers a useful framework for aligning a company'S market focus, its business plans, and its management of critical business processes. This alignment is critical, if companies are to create environmentally conscious products while remaining competitive in a global marketplace.     

试论环保工作“三同时”与环保档案的同步管理

建设项目环保工作“三同时”制度是环境保护管理的一项重要制度,环保档案是项目建设中直接形成的具有保存价值的不同形式和载体的原始资料,把握工作重点环节,坚持环保工作“三同时”与环保档案同步管理对建设优质工程项目和加强环境保护具有重要意义。     

环境质量管理新模式:启程与挑战

污染物总量控制是我国近10年环境保护中一个重要的治理模式。但在环境容量"硬约束"、公众对良好环境质量"硬需求"的大背景下,我国的环境管理应逐步从总量控制转向以环境质量改善为核心,改善环境质量已经成为环保工作的出发点和落脚点。2015年,随着新《环境保护法》的实施和"三大战役"的先后打响,法律保障、行动计划、政府问责、质量监测等逐步就绪,环境质量管理的基础手段不断夯实。2016年,环境质量管理新模式将全面启动,建议从强化公众环境健康、实行区域流域总量控制、改革生态环保管理体制、强化市场机制、推行排污许可证制度、加强信息公开和公众参与等方面着手,全面推进环境质量管理转型与创新。     

污染物排放总量控制及其在县区范围内实施的探讨

总量控制是我国的一项新出台的环境政策,将有利于我国的经济可持续发展,有助于我国的环境管理向高级阶段转移,是今后污染控制的主要手段。本文分析了总量控制的概念其特点,并结合我国县区的情况,探讨了总量控制实施的技术条件,提出了县区实施总量控制的几点建议。     

Making sense of environmental accounting

Much as Total Quality Management (TQM) has helped companies decrease waste and enhance value, environmental accounting offers an approach and a suite of tools that can help organizations improve both environmental quality and bottom-line business performance. Its focus is to bridge the world of finance and economics with the world of environmental management. Companies in all sectors have discovered that they can increase profits by meeting and even surpassing environmental regulations. Through environmental accounting, companies can discover more of these opportunities and, ideally, bring environmental concerns earlier into planning, decision making, and operations. This article introduces environmental accounting and some basic principles that should guide organizations' thinking on environmental accounting and environmental accounting systems. It also describes several different objectives for environmental accounting that imply different requirements and orientations. Although the focus of this article is on environmental accounting as an aspect of forward-looking management and decision making in companies, much of the discussion applies to nonprofits and government units as well.     

“十二五”四川省主要污染物总量减排形势分析

实施污染物总量减排是我国环境管理和污染控制的重大举措,“十二五”期间仍将是我国环境保护的重点内容。本文根据四川省“十一五”总量减排的成效和问题,结合国家对“十二五”总量减排的新要求和特点,从畜禽养殖、城镇生活污染、机动车尾气防治、重点行业减排等方面,对未来减排存在的压力进行了分析,并由此提出了优化产业结构、严把项目准入关、加强环保基础设施建设和管理、加强机动车污染防治、加强畜禽污染治理、加强重点污染源治理、构建综合保障体系等措施和建议。     

Applying total quality and strategic planning techniques for improved compliance performance at polaroid

Polaroid Corporation is committed to a policy of respect for the environment. Each division is charged with responsibility to achieve environmental goals for compliance, toxic use and waste reduction, and community outreach. This article shows how a major manufacturing division is now striving to meet new compliance demands by combining strategic planning and Total Quality techniques.     

Multi-angle Indicators System of Non-point Pollution Source Assessment in Rural Areas: A Case Study Near Taihu Lake

This study aims to identify key environmental risk sources contributing to water eutrophication and to suggest certain risk management strategies for rural areas. The multi-angle indicators included in the risk source assessment system were non-point source pollution, deficient waste treatment, and public awareness of environmental risk, which combined psychometric paradigm methods, the contingent valuation method, and personal interviews to describe the environmental sensitivity of local residents. Total risk values of different villages near Taihu Lake were calculated in the case study, which resulted in a geographic risk map showing which village was the critical risk source of Taihu eutrophication. The increased application of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N), loss vulnerability of pollutant, and a lack of environmental risk awareness led to more serious non-point pollution, especially in rural China. Interesting results revealed by the quotient between the scores of objective risk sources and subjective risk sources showed what should be improved for each study village. More environmental investments, control of agricultural activities, and promotion of environmental education are critical considerations for rural environmental management. These findings are helpful for developing targeted and effective risk management strategies in rural areas.     

Social Learning Through Evaluation: A Case Study of Overcoming Constraints for Management of Dryland Salinity

Conventional approaches to evaluation of environmental programs have tended to limit themselves to restricted measures of program effectiveness. This paper shows how a social learning approach can be incorporated into evaluating public environmental programs. A social learning approach is particularly suited to complex environmental challenges which are inherently difficult to understand, predict, and manage, thus complicating the evaluation process. The paper presents an Australian case study of dryland salinity management where there are major knowledge barriers impeding conventional management techniques. The research presented in this paper focused on evaluating a public demonstration program to track its impact through its design, implementation, and monitoring phases. The paper shows that, by incorporating social learning principles and practices, program evaluation can promote collective action, critical reflection, and increased knowledge to underpin improved environmental management.     

Sectoralization of an Integrated Coastal Management Programme: A Case Study in Madagascar

This paper focuses on integrated environmental management and shows why emphasis should be put on implementation issues. The authors take the example of integrated coastal management (ICM) and analyse a case study they recently conducted in Madagascar, where an ambitious ICM programme is being implemented. They explain a strong perverse mechanism called sectoralization, which appears to threaten many integration efforts and is a good example of what is at stake with the implementation of the integration concept. They conclude especially that integrated environmental management should not be considered as the only modern form of environmental action, and that a certain type of case study is now needed to analyse existing environmental management systems before designing integration programmes.     

Implementing an environmental business strategy: A step-by-step guide

With more and more organizations seeking opportunities to generate benefits beyond compliance from environmental management activities, the challenges for environmental directors today is to develop and implement an environmental strategy that links environmental performance with the overarching strategic business goals of the organization. Organizations today are looking for opportunities to develop environmental management solutions that not only address the concerns of regulatory stakeholders, but also provide opportunities to improve operating efficiency and financial performance, enhance customer satisfaction, sustain market growth, and enhance goodwill, to satisfy the demands of a broader set of stakeholder groups including customers, investors, and employees. To achieve broader benefits from environmental management investments, this article shows how organizations must first develop a methodology for aligning their environmental management activities with the organization's strategic business goals and create a plan for systematically managing continuous improvement to achieve these goals. The second challenge is to implement this strategy at the business unit and facility level in a manner which integrates environmental management activities with an organization's core business processes to achieve improved product and service performance.     

Environmental performance indicators for enhancing environmental management

Traditionally, environmental issues and concerns have been viewed as a constraint to businesses. This has resulted in environmental managers relying heavily on a reactive, compliance-based approach to justify change. Businesses are now recognizing that efficient management in the environmental arena can benefit the entire company and open new opportunities for increased profits. Managers have acknowledged that environmental issues can be integrated into daily business trends and activities. Not only does sound environmental management decrease liability, but also in current markets a “green” image can attract investors and customers. This article shows how one tool that progressive companies are focusing attention on—environmental performance indicators—is being used to convey the current status of environmental issues and improve the management of these issues for the benefit of the company as well as the environment.     

Total employee involvement: Measures for success

Whether environmental management is successful depends partly on whether managers can actively involve employees in policy formulation and implementation. This not only generates shop floor support for environmental policy, it also makes use of employees' environmental knowledge and expertise. Based on eight detailed case studies of different Dutch companies, this article examines the involvement of employees in environmental management and the possibilities of enhancing this involvement. It shows how employee involvement can be promoted by improving employeemanagement interaction, promoting responsibility for the environment among middle management and individual employees, formulating supplementary policy, and introducing a number of concrete measures.     

Supporting multi-stakeholder environmental decisions

This paper examines how multiple criteria analysis (MCA) can be used to support multi-stakeholder environmental management decisions. It presents a study through which 48 stakeholders from environmental, primary production and community interest groups used MCA to prioritise 30 environmental management problems in the Mackay-Whitsunday region of Queensland, Australia. The MCA model, with procedures for aggregating multi-stakeholder output, was used to inform a final decision on the priority of the region's environmental management problems. The result was used in the region's environmental management plan as required under Australia's Natural Heritage Trust programme. The study shows how relatively simple MCA methods can help stakeholders make group decisions, even when they hold strongly conflicting preferences.     

Toward effective environmental auditing at the TVA: Management audits versus compliance audits

Companies that incorporate Total Quality Management into their operations are placing increased emphasis on identifying the root causes of deficiencies and problems. This is in keeping with the TQM principles identified by Deming in Out of the Crisis. Deming states that quality comes not from inspection or from management by objectives or results, but from improvements made in the process and products in order to meet customer needs. Deming's approach demands a shift in focus from addressing symptoms to addressing causes. In this article, environmental management audits are presented as the best means to assure that adequate management controls are in place to protect the company, its managers and its employees from penalties associated with civil and criminal enforcement actions.     

Benchmarking for continuous performance improvement: Tactics for success

Benchmarking is a powerful management technique that can help improve an organization's environmental performance on a number of dimensions. Benchmarking is not a cookbook solution but a systematic process of searching for the organization that is the best at a given process (“best-in-class”) and continually adopting or adapting new processes to accelerate improvement. As a continual process including planning, analysis, integration, action, and maturity phases, benchmarking should be integrated into the planning stage of the management system. Once processes are strategically identified, they can be improved within the company's Total Quality Management program. Many benefits, such as teamwork and job satisfaction, accompany benchmarking, but the greatest companywide advantage is becoming more competitive. Finding a suitable partner is crucial to the success of the benchmarking process. This article shows the traditional one-on-one approach is the most effective because it saves time and money that allows organizations to learn from each other. In addition, examples of where benchmarking partners may be found, as well as several success indicators in the benchmarking process, are presented. Since the ultimate intent of benchmarking is positive change, the difference between reengineering and continuous performance improvement and the role benchmarking plays in each is also discussed.     

ISO 14001: A systems approach to managing environmental risk

The field of environmental risk management is relatively new and has developed rapidly over the past several years. There has been, however, a significant lack of integration of seemingly dissimilar disciplines into a meaningful context for top management risk decisions—until now. A new holistic approach, centered on the ISO 14001 standard for environmental management systems, addresses many of the issues that have kept environmental risk management focused on technical rather than strategic issues. This article describes the risk management process, illustrates how the ISO 14001 standard can be used by organizations to integrate and assess technical environmental information, and shows how to place this information in a strategic risk management context. It also explains how key ISO 14001 concepts such as policy implementation, operational control, and continuous improvement form the basis of a systems approach, and why the systems approach is the preferred, cost-effective structure for controlling environmental risk.     

中日农村环境管理对比及对中国的启示

日本与我国在历史上同属传统的东亚小农经济国家,在社会、经济、文化等方面的发展历程和存在的问题具有共通性。日本的农村生态环境管理随社会经济发展不断调整适应,政府也数次推动乡村振兴。对比研究中日两国农村环境管理及其背后的社会经济因素,虽然两国在农村环境管理上有相似性,但也有较大不同,我国不能完全照搬日本的农村环境管理体制机制,必须走一条适应我国国情的特色道路,循序渐进推进农业农村污染防治。在开展农村环保工作的具体举措上,日本也有较多可借鉴之处:一是以完善的法规政策体系保障农村环境管理;二是以精准的财政补贴支撑农村环境管理;三是以科学的规划和技术标准体系服务农村环境管理;四是以规范的行业和市场服务体系推动农村环境管理;五是以亲民务实的环境宣传教育助力农村环境管理。