Integrating Economic Analysis into LCA

Current life‐cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies rarely include economic analysis—even though this element is almost always crucial to any company's decision making. This article discusses practical tools for integrating economic considerations into LCA. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Making business integration work: A survival strategy for EHS managers

Realizing the benefits of environment, health, and safety (EHS) management systems requires more than just rewriting policies and procedures, EHS tasks and activities must be pushed out into all aspects of the organization. The success of this process necessitates an evolving role for EHS managers. For EHS managers, business integration involves the challenge of integrating environment, health, and safety awareness, responsibility, and action into multiple jobs and business processes, leveraging scarce resources to maximize value and minimize costs. Drawing on recent work in the fields of sociology and political science, this article presents conceptual tools for assisting EHS managers to plan and strategize the changing role of the EHS function. By assessing political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes, EHS managers can maximize the success of EHS programs, while adding value to companies' core operations.     

Greening the Fife Economy: Ecological Modernization as a Pathway for Local Economic Development

Progress in the greening of UK local government has been hampered by uncertainty about the relationship between resource use and environmental protection. Ecological modernizationmay offer the most appropriateparadigm to reconcile economic, social and environmentalinterpretationsof sustainability. The transition from corporate to strategic environmental management currently being attempted by some 'green' authorities can be construed as an attempt to promote ecological modernization in the form of institutional learning. Fife Council in Scotland provides an interesting case study. Progress with corporate environmental management has become bound up with a radical devolution of decision making. Efforts to link the authority's Sustainable Development Policy to a Local Agenda 21 programme have been initiated with the piloting of sustainability indicators.     

Managing United States Public Lands in Response to Climate Change: A View From the Ground Up

Federal land managers are faced with the task of balancing multiple uses and goals when making decisions about land use and the activities that occur on public lands. Though climate change is now well recognized by federal agencies and their local land and resource managers, it is not yet clear how issues related to climate change will be incorporated into on-the-ground decision making within the framework of multiple use objectives. We conducted a case study of a federal land management agency field office, the San Juan Public Lands Center in Durango, CO, U.S.A., to understand from their perspective how decisions are currently made, and how climate change and carbon management are being factored into decision making. We evaluated three major management sectors in which climate change or carbon management may intersect other use goals: forests, biofuels, and grazing. While land managers are aware of climate change and eager to understand more about how it might affect land resources, the incorporation of climate change considerations into everyday decision making is currently quite limited. Climate change is therefore on the radar screen, but remains a lower priority than other issues. To assist the office in making decisions that are based on sound scientific information, further research is needed into how management activities influence carbon storage and resilience of the landscape under climate change.     

Corporate environmental excellence and stewardship: Five critical tasks of top management

One of the most important challenges facing business is shaping the role of senior management in corporate environmental performance. In some leading companies, the CEO or chairman takes the initiative to carefully define his or her role because of a strong personal commitment, a keen grasp of the business incentives, in response to past problems, or because of a combination of these. In other companies, even where corporate policies genuinely support and promote corporate environmental, health, and safety programs, there may still be inaction or reluctance on the part of top management to participate or get involved. This management posture may work for a few more years, but no longer than that—and could quickly become a major detriment to any company's ongoing market success or viability. This article will focus on a strategy for getting top management involved in your company's programs and, where they are already involved, for sharing some insights we have gained from our work with a number of companies where top management has taken a strong role in environmental issues and has established precedence for what can work well.     

An integrated and pragmatic approach: Global plant safety management

The Bhopal disaster in India in 1984 has compelled manufacturing companies to review their operations in order to minimize their risk exposure. Much study has been done on the subject of risk assessment and in refining safety reviews of plant operations. However, little work has been done to address the broader needs of decision makers in the multinational environment. The corporate headquarters of multinational organizations are concerned with identifying vulnerable areas to assure that appropriate risk-minimization measures are in force or will be taken. But the task of screening global business units for safety prowess is complicated and time consuming. This article takes a step towards simplifying this process by presenting the decisional model developed by the authors. Beginning with an overview of key issues affecting global safety management, the focus shifts to the multinational vulnerability model developed by the authors, which reflects an integration of approaches. The article concludes with a discussion of areas for further research. While the global chemical industry and major incidents therein are used for illustration, the procedures and solutions suggested here are applicable to all manufacturing operations.     

NEW APPROACHES TO COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING IN CANADA1

ABSTRACT. In 1970, the Canadian Federal Government passed the Canada Water Act which provides for a co-operative federal-provincial approach to water resource management. The purpose of this paper is to outline our definition of comprehensive planning and the approach being taken under the new legislation. Two basic premises underly the definition. They are that resource management consists of an array of problems and that the prime function of planning is to provide information for decision making. The definition of comprehensive planning is embodied in a general statement and a set of principles. The principles define the approach that should be taken to provide adequate information for decision making in today's complex environment. A brief resume of the jurisdictions for water management in Canada leads to a discussion of a joint federal-provincial comprehensive study of the Qu'Appelle River Basin in Southern Saskatchewan. The basin and the study are described briefly. This is followed by an outline of the economic and social considerations which are being incorporated into the comprehensive planning study for the basin.     

Where the rubber meets the road: Measuring the success of environmental programs

In order to integrate environmental, health, and safety (EHS) programs into mainstream business management, EHS managers must measure the success of their strategies. This article presents techniques and samples for both quantitative measurement (EHS results) and qualitative measurement (progress toward implementation). It also provides a case study of measurement at the Perkin-Elmer Corporation, which has achieved notable successes with straightforward measurement approaches. Performance measurement systems can make the difference between an EHS program that rewards stakeholders for hard work, and one that fades and frustrates.     

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.     

Strengthening business with a new vision at avery dennison

This article presents a case study regarding initiatives, apparent failures, and successes that the Avery Dennison Materials Group organization encountered over the last five years in creating and sustaining environmental awareness throughout its organization. This awareness encompasses considerations thought to position the organization to compete against the core elements proposed within the ISO 14001 environmental management system protocol. While Avery Dennison's Materials Group has undertaken many initiatives which strive to achieve business integration, this article focuses primarily on three environmental management systems believed to be the foundation for a manufacturing or service organization—a foundation built on sustainable compliance, incorporation of quality management concepts, and the fulfillment of environmental performance expectations driven by the community at large. Those three programs are (1) an Environmental Stewardship Policy with specific environmental operating principles, (2) Environmental Control Instructions (ECIs), which establish accountability for proper operation, and (3) an Environmental Management System Assessment similar to the Global Environmental Management Initiatives (GEMI) environmental self-assessment tool. These cornerstones provide a basis for the construction of a management program pyramid, the top of which results in a quality process for making effective business decisions by integrating core environmental operating principles.     

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.     

On the question of managing sustainable development of industrial enterprises in a Russian region

This paper presents the theoretical foundations for the sustainable development of a Russian region's industrial system. For this study, we made an assessment of the production activities of the Rostov region's light‐manufacturing enterprises. The light‐industrial sector of the Rostov region's economy has been characterized, and the level of sustainable development of the region's enterprises has been calculated. The algorithm of development strategy was developed based on the rational use of natural resources. We have worked out several innovative proposals and calculated the cost‐effectiveness of their implementation in the region's light‐manufacturing enterprises. The economic and mathematical decision‐making model is based on the analytic hierarchy process, and the optimization calculation results that we obtained are presented in the article.     

Achieving environmental excellence through TQEM strategic alliances

Generally speaking, today's TQEM initiatives do not improve a firm's activities beyond the shipping dock and onto consumer and postconsumer use and reuse. Although internal TQEM efforts do improve environmental impacts of a firm's operations, most firms remain focused on the traditional bottom-line objective of increasing throughput. For these reasons, most firms implementing TQEM miss the many opportunities to improve environmental performance (including cost and quality) through asset recovery, resource sharing, and reuse. However, by taking the advantages of teamwork beyond corporate boundaries, firms can close the loop on environmental improvements. Inter-firm teaming for environmental advantage, which we define as TQEM alliancing, initiates a cyclical approach to environmental performance improvement. It does so by forging strategic relationships among firms that can leverage each other's environmental weaknesses. TQEM allying is a round-robin game plan. In this article, the authors show how it allows firms to take their environmental improvement initiatives beyond regulatory compliance (and into proactivity), beyond pollution control (to total pollution avoidance), and beyond profitability (for a quantitative as well as qualitative bottom line), because firms will be integrating external as well as internal functions across different business domains.     

DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF MULTIPLE‐OBJECTIVE DECISION‐MAKING METHODS FOR WATERSHED MANAGEMENT PLANNING1

ABSTRACT: Making decisions for environmental management is a complex task due to the multiplicity and diversity of technological choices. Furthermore, the exploitation of natural resources and the preservation of the natural environment imply objectives that are often in conflict within a sustainable development paradigm. Managers and other decision makers require techniques to assist them in understanding strategic decision making. This paper illustrates the use of a multiple‐objective decision‐making methodology and an integrative geographical information system‐based decision‐making tool developed to help watershed councils prioritize and evaluate restoration activities at the watershed level. Both were developed through a multidisciplinary approach. The decision‐making tool is being applied in two watersheds of Oregon's Willamette River Basin. The results suggest that multiple‐objective methods can provide a valuable tool in analyzing complex watershed management issues.     

Procedural Integration in Support of Environmental Policy Objectives: Implementing Sustainability

Translating sustainability policy goals into concrete action has proven to be a complex challenge for government agencies, municipalities and businesses. Existing planning and decision-making methods, such as Comprehensive Planning, Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Management Systems, are being used to address this focus on sustainability. United States Army policy requires the use of these three procedures by installation planners and managers, providing a unique opportunity for innovation. This paper examines the applicability of these procedures for implementing the Army's sustainable operations policy goals, and explores how the current independent and disconnected implementation can be improved through integration. Included in this analysis is a review of organizational barriers to integrated planning and management. The analysis is applicable outside the Army as these three decision-making procedures are used in many contexts, and installation management shares many characteristics with local government land use planning, federal land management, and corporate business operations.     

Federal Decentralization and Adaptive Management of Water Resources: Reservoir Reallocation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Reservoir operations must respond to changing conditions, such as climate, water demand, regulations, and sedimentation. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) can reallocate reservoir storage to respond to such changes. We assembled and analyzed a database of reservoir reallocations implemented and proposed by the Corps. While only a small portion of total reservoir storage nationwide has been reallocated, there are substantial differences in reallocation frequency and magnitude across the nation: some Corps Districts and Divisions use reallocation while others do not, relying more on discretion and small‐scale adaptation of operations. This difference illustrates how water resource agencies like the Corps decentralize management decisions to allow responding to disparate conditions. Decentralized decision‐making provides a responsive approach to water management, while centralized and hierarchical decision‐making is a slower, more deliberative approach. Decentralized decision‐making may lead to the accumulation of short‐term, local decisions over time to the point that the system is managed differently than anticipated. Reallocation, which is a form of planned adaptive management, can be accommodating of multiple competing demands and different stakeholders, yet expensive and less temporally responsive. The challenge for any large water resource management agency is to balance between local‐level, responsive discretion vs. centralized, planned decision‐making.     

Integrated Land and Water Management in the United Kingdom: Narrowing the Implementation Gap

Riparian buffer zones have been incorporated in land and water management policy for England since 1994, when the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food introduced a Water Fringe Option (WFO) as part of a broader habitat conservation scheme. Whilst natural scientists have examined the functioning of riparian buffer zones, understanding of farmers' decision making regarding the adoption or non-adoption of voluntary buffer zone policies is very limited. This paper examines the factors influencing the decision making of farmers who were eligible to join the WFO in three river catchments. Quantitative and qualitative information was collected from farmers using semi-structured interviews and was supplemented with in-depth interviews with representatives of public agencies, agricultural groups and independent experts. Data analysis was completed using the 'Framework' analytical approach and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 8.0 computer software. The research revealed that decisions to participate in the WFO were influenced by a mix of situational, psychological and sociological characteristics, which suggests that policy makers must attach greater importance to implementation conditions and farmers decision making if riparian buffer zones are to play a more prominent role in the management of land and water in rural catchments. Tightly structured schemes will only appeal to a narrow segment of the farming population and will not lead to widespread re-creation of riparian habitats. A more flexible and collaborative style of policy development is needed in order for riparian buffer zone policies to meet the circumstances and needs of the diverse UK farming community.     

How to reconcile environmental and economic performance to improve corporate sustainability: corporate environmental strategies in the European paper industry

This paper discusses the relationship between environmental and economic performance and the influence of corporate strategies with regard to sustainability and the environment. After formulating a theoretical model, results are reported from an empirical analysis of the European paper manufacturing industry. New data are used to test hypotheses derived from the theoretical model, using environmental performance indices representing different corporate environmental strategy orientations. In particular, an emissions-based index largely reflecting end-of-pipe strategies and an inputs-based index reflecting integrated pollution prevention are distinguished. For the emissions-based index, a predominantly negative relationship between environmental and economic performance is found, whereas for the inputs-based index no significant link is found. This is consistent with the theoretical model, which predicts the possibility of different relationships. The results also show that for firms with pollution prevention-oriented corporate environmental strategies, the relationship between environmental and economic performance is more positive, thus making improvements in corporate sustainability more likely. Based on this last insight, managerial implications of this are discussed with regard to strategy choices, investment decisions and operations management.     

Investment Evaluation of an Integrated Steel Mill using Multiple Criteria

A conventional steel manufacturing process generates considerable amounts of reject streams and secondary raw material. These streams are either recycled back to the process or treated as waste. Recycling affects negatively on the production yield and on the controllability of unit operations. Waste represents considerable cost unless utilized in another production process as raw material. In these streams, there exists a potential to use the chemical elements more effectively. Therefore, it might be interesting to find an economical technical solution to collect the streams and increase steel production.

Investments on process equipment are typically evaluated using conventional economic figures, like payback time, Net Present Value (NPV) etc. The problem with these practices is, that they consider only numerical aspects. Non-numerical and non-economical criteria are hard to cater to the evaluation. Still, they may affect on the investment profitability in the long run. Such criteria include environmental friendliness or the aspects of process integration.

The article presents a comparison of a conventional steel manufacturing process with one reject stream processing alternative. A target in the process modification is to optimize the use of material and energy within the site. The comparison is based on a balanced set of criteria that affect on the efficiency of an investment. The use of these criteria is a part of the new methodology that has been developed to evaluate investments on integrated process sites. In addition to the criteria, the complete methodology includes: 1) connection of company’s strategic issues into technical design and decision making, 2) optimization of the process and calculation of process potentials (differences in the performance values between the existing process and the modified process) through the use of process integration methodologies and 3) use of decision-making aids. The research is a part of Finnish National Technology Program, “Process-Integration 2000–2004”.     

Issues for small businesses with waste management

Participation by small and medium enterprise (SME) in corporate social responsibility issues has been found to be lacking. This is a critical issue, as individually SMEs may have little impact on the environment but their collective footprint is significant. The management style and ethical stance of the owner-manager affects business decision making and therefore has a direct impact on the environmental actions of the business. Although adoption of environmental practices to create competitive advantage has been advocated, many businesses see implementation as a cost which cannot be transferred to their customers. After a brief review of pertinent literature this paper reports on an exploratory investigation into the issue. Results show that whereas owner-managers of small enterprises express concern regarding the environment, this does not then translate into better waste management practices.