Applying tqem practices to pollution prevention at AT&T's columbus works plant

In recent years AT&T changed its focus on environmental policies from compliance to pollution prevention. Pollution prevention is an integrated program that includes design for the environment, “green” manufacturing, and a comprehensive program to reduce existing waste in production. The principles of Total Quality Management can be applied to pollution prevention as well as the more traditional manufacturing concepts. The project described in this article is one of several concurrent programs being conducted at AT&T'S Columbus Works to reduce overall waste produced by the facility by applying TQM practices.     

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.     

长江经济带工业废气污染治理效率的时空演变及其影响因素研究

本文选取1998—2015年30个省份数据,采用超效率SBM模型测算全国、长江经济带工业废气污染治理效率;采用门槛效应模型研判长江经济带工业废气污染治理效率的影响因素.研究发现:1998—2015年长江经济带工业废气污染治理效率大于全国工业废气污染治理效率;长江经济带工业废气污染治理效率与全国工业废气污染治理效率的演变轨迹相似;长江经济带工业废气污染治理效率空间格局从"两极分化型"向"过渡型"演变;长江经济带沿线11省份工业废气污染治理效率与重工业占比呈负相关;当人均GDP较小时,长江经济带工业废气污染治理效率与工业化率、地方法规颁布件数、环境污染与破坏总次数呈负相关,与群众因污染来信数呈正相关;当人均GDP跨过门槛阈值拐点后,相关关系反之.为进一步推动长江经济带高质量发展,应加强中央与地方政府合作共促工业污染防控治理,推动重化工业绿色发展,加强媒体对废气污染的长期有效监督,推动建立科学有效的"三方共治"体系.     

Environmentally conscious manufacturing: A technology for the nineties

Editor's note: Companies embracing TQEM must evaluate and change their manufacturing processes to stay globally competitive in the nineties. This article shows how an environmentally conscious manufacturing program incorporating new approaches to waste reduction will help companies achieve their corporatewide TQEM and strategic goals.     

构建有色金属矿山二级生态工业研究

为了解决有色金属矿山所面临的环境污染和资源短缺的问题,提出了绿色矿山的发展模式,构建有色金属矿山二级生态工业体系是实现绿色矿山的重要途径。有色金属矿山二级生态工业体系依据工业生态学原理,以实现工业资源的有限输入和工业废物的有限输出为目的,具体通过矿山清洁生产、预防废物产生、废物循环利用及最小量废物必要处置等途径实现。     

Total quality product design—how to integrate environmental criteria into the product realization process

Recent case studies on the financial benefits of pollution prevention programs well attest to the notion that a commitment to the environment can help profitability not only by avoiding costs and potential liabilities, but also by generating environmentally-based opportunities for competitive advantage. Achieving these benefits, however, represents a complex management challenge that requires embedding environmental concerns in the day-to-day decisions and actions of a company'S employees. This article shows how the marriage of corporate environmental stewardship and TQM, better known as TQEM, is particularly well suited to the area of product design and why environmental health and safety experts can improve a product'S environmental performance.     

Corporate waste accounting at PSE&G: Bringing a companywide system on-line

Waste accounting has become a necessary practice for companies endeavoring to track their wastes toward realizing discrete waste minimization and pollution prevention objectives. Measurement systems and program initiatives certainly must be tested to find out what will repeatedly work for and best serve a company. Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) has committed to revolutionizing the processes of managing materials, wastes, and their associated information. In laying out their strategic plan, company representatives specified the need for a companywide waste accounting system to enable them to monitor progress toward achieving two important short-term waste management targets by the close of 1995. Together with the Electric Power Research Institute, PSE&G is implementing a four-year program to install such a system. The results of the first year-and-a-half's work are reported in this article. The purpose of this article is to discuss the results of implementing a waste accounting system on a utility companywide basis. We will address the experience of bringing such a system on-line at PSE&G. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) previously developed a framework and approach for measuring the performance of utility pollution prevention programs called waste accounting, including the development of a software program called Accounting Software Application for Pollution Prevention or ASAPP.¹ These programs were devised to assimilate detailed information from the facility up through the corporate levels.     

Reducing anthropogenic environmental stresses: A review on cleaner production and industrial ecology

Cleaner production (CP) provides source control measures of minimizing the waste and emissions occurred by the production and processes. CP, which is also known by the term pollution prevention (P2), has been practiced for several years among various countries across the world. Practicing of CP in industries supports in optimization of materials utilization, lowering the energy consumption, and the reduction of emissions to air, water, and soil. CP provides a continuous and preventive environmental improvement for the organizations by focusing on the prevention rather than providing solutions, once the pollution has been occurred. Implementing CP in a business requires support from the employees from top to bottom levels in the hierarchy, to obtain a successful and long‐term outcome. Thus, CP is no longer considered as a standalone process and should be integrated in the entire business development activities, in order to improve the quality of life. CP can also be identified as a subset of industrial ecology, which focuses on designing the industrial processes, products, and services, in order to minimize the environmental concerns of the industrial activities. This article will provide an overview of the background of CP, the CP assessment methodology, and the concepts of industrial ecology.     

STATE WATER QUALITY CONTROL PROGRAM IN ARIZONA1

ABSTRACT: Arizona's water pollution control program is based on authorties of Arizona Revised Statutes and Public Law 92–500, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. The primary areas of this program are monitoring, facility inspections, plan review, planning, discharge permits and grants for the construction of publicly-owned waste water treatment facilities. The discharge permit program deals with control of point-source discharges and is administered by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The planning and construction grants programs are administered by the State Water Quality Control Council and are implemented by the Bureau of Water Quality Control, which serves as staff to the Council. There are several challenges that face the State in this program. First is the adaptation of the “eastern law” to deal with Arizona's water quality problems. Second is to address problems caused by a long history of “laissez-faire” environmental quality management. Third is a mutual cooperation and coordination among the many entities involved in water resources management. Areas of particular interest in the State's program is the process setting water quality standards and the involvement of people of diversified backgrounds in the field of areawide planning under Section 208 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which is primarily concerned with non-point sources of water pollution.     

Kodak's framework and assessment tool for implementing TQEM

Total Quality Management provides a powerful management foundation and framework to implement an organization's environmental vision and principles. The elements of TQM include customer/stakeholder focus, a high degree of senior management commitment, a long-term focus, and tools such as continuous improvement, empowerment, and a prevention-based approach. This article describes a matrix developed by major U.S. and Canadian firms that serves as (1) a guide to organizations implementing TQEM from the ground floor up and (2) an assessment tool that can be used internally or externally to measure progress toward environmental management excellence and to identify opportunities for improvement. The matrix is based on categories adapted from those used in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award process. The relationship between individual matrix cell criteria and key concepts such as pollution prevention and sustainability is also described.     

Environmental management information systems: New tools for measuring performance

Successful implementation of environmental management information systems (EMIS) has become essential to the success of total quality environmental management (TQEM) programs. Effective TQEM programs will be early indicators of which companies survive and thrive in today's competitive business environment. Highly competitive industries such as chemicals, electronics, and oil and gas are becoming very effective in cooperating to develop metrics, models, and tools that are based on business processes rather than regulatory edicts. Now electric power companies, newly exposed to market competition, are starting to develop and implement these metrics, standards, and tools. That industry provides a model for joining TQEM and EMIS.     

New York City Environmental Justice Alliance Waterfront Justice Project

This paper reviews key challenges and opportunities addressed by the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance's (NYC-EJA) Waterfront Justice Project, a citywide campaign to promote climate resilience and sustainability in urban industrial waterfront communities of New York City. NYC-EJA is a non-profit membership-driven network linking grassroots organisations from low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour in their struggle for environmental justice. The Waterfront Justice Project is documenting community vulnerability in the context of climate change impacts, sources of industrial pollution, and demographic and socio-economic trends. This campaign is enabling community-based organisations, environmental justice communities, city planners, local and state government agencies, local business-owners, and other stakeholders to work in partnership to achieve community resilience while advocating for local jobs and promoting best practices in pollution prevention. New York City's waterfront policies ease the siting and clustering of public infrastructure, water pollution control plants, waste transfer stations, energy facilities, and heavy manufacturing uses in six areas designated as Significant Maritime and Industrial Areas (SMIAs). The SMIAs are located in environmental justice communities, largely low-income communities and communities of colour, in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. New York City's local waterfront land use and zoning policies create cumulative risk exposure not only to residents and workers in the host waterfront communities, but also, in the event of storm surge or sea-level rise, to neighbouring, upland communities.     

Polaroid's environmental accounting and reporting system: Benefits and limitations of a tqem measurement tool

Polaroid Corporation has established an ambitious pollution prevention program that calls for reducing chemical use and waste by 10 percent per unit per year during the period 1988 to 1993. A notable aspect of Polaroid'S efforts is the environmental accounting and reporting system (EARS) it has developed to measure progress toward this goal. EARS is a Total Quality Environmental Management tool with applicability in similar industries.     

Integrating pollution prevention into the manufacturing process

An Integrated Manufacturing and Environmental (IME) approach to pollution prevention offers the opportunity to achieve regulatory compliance and substantial operational efficiencies. It is accomplished by realizing the simple fact that waste represents a quality defect and adapting traditional manufacturing industry analytical methods to also consider environmental factors. The author outlines techniques and procedures entailed by this approach that are applicable to both large and small facilities as part of an overall Total Quality Management program. Several case examples are provided.     

区域大气污染防治管理系统建设需求分析

区域大气污染防治管理系统是生态环境保护信息化工程(《"十二五"国家政务信息化工程建设规划》中规划的国家级信息系统之一)项目建设的重要内容之一.本文对区域大气污染防治管理系统的建设需求进行了分析,系统针对大尺度的区域性大气环境质量问题,紧密结合国务院"大气污染防治行动计划"的目标任务要求,开展数据调度与综合分析等功能的建设,旨在通过数据分析提高重点区域大气环境质量状况与污染成因的评估能力,通过情景模拟与模型运算为区域大气污染治理措施的制定与动态调整提供定量化数据支持.系统的建设与实施将有望成为国家大气污染防治领域跨部门数据共享与交换的基础工程,为区域大气污染防治工作提供有力的信息化技术支撑.     

水生态环境保护回顾与展望：从污染防治到三水统筹

水生态环境保护事关美丽中国目标的实现。本文阐释了我国从水污染防治向水环境、水生态、水资源“三水”统筹转变的新时代水生态环境保护内涵，从国内视角梳理我国水污染防治实践取得的成效，识别美丽中国水生态环境保护面临的制约性问题，首次在全国层面与欧美发达国家的水环境质量、水生态保护和水资源保障情况进行国际对标分析，提出以水生态系统保护目标为指引、以流域生态环境空间管控为基础、以“三水”统筹系统治理为路径、以治理体系和治理能力现代化为保障的水生态环境保护战略建议。     

Eleven major companies take quality environmental management initiatives within president's commission

The President'S Commission on Environmental Quality (PCEQ) is translating TQEM theory into action at industrial facilities around the United States. Eleven major corporations are undertaking voluntary demonstration projects at twelve facilities throughout the country to actively test TQEM. Corporate participants will share their conclusions about incentives, barriers, management processes, and metrics to produce a “blueprint” for successful TQEM programs elsewhere.     

深圳市工业固体废物产生特征和管理对策建议

工业固体废物规范化管理是环境污染防治和实现经济绿色发展的重要组成部分。根据工业固体废物统计数据,全面分析了深圳市固体废物的产生特征,并以减量化、资源化和无害化为基本原则提出针对性管理策略和具体措施建议。     

比利时环境治理典型经验分析——以弗拉芒大区为例

作为欧盟的核心成员国之一,近年来比利时在环境治理方面成效显著。尤其是弗拉芒大区,逐渐形成了以"土地证书"为标志的土壤污染治理、"从摇篮到坟墓"的废弃物治理和以"许可证制度"为核心的空气污染治理等一系列特点鲜明的环境治理措施和方法。本文着重分析弗拉芒大区环境治理的机构设置和目标,以及其土地污染治理中的"土地证书"和土地交易管理,空气污治理中的工业污染源和交通污染源治理,废弃物治理中的法律、经济与自愿工具使用三个方面的典型经验。结合比利时弗拉芒大区的典型经验和现阶段我国环境政策体系存在的主要问题,建议我国环境政策体系的改进和完善,应更加注重实现污染外部性的内部化、利用市场手段来实现土壤保护和开发新的环境政策工具。     

Finding green in clean: Progressive pollution prevention at hyde tools

Hyde Tools, Inc., of Southbridge, Massachusetts, is a medium-sized firm employing about three hundred persons. In 1988, it learned of a company that eliminated its wastewater discharge after being threatened with massive Clean Water Act fines resulting from a suit brought by a Massachusetts environmental group. Hyde decided to devise a similar program to attain zero water discharge and do it within five years. More than 75 percent toward its goal, Hyde'S environmental success, detailed in this article, still relies heavily on the company'S Total Quality Management system and the efforts of a dedicated environmental staff. Hyde'S success typifies TQEM in action—showing how small continuous improvements can lead to significant financial paybacks.