Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
better understanding of the production cost of
a product, and that it properly allocates costs to
product, process, system or facility. Measuring
environmental costs also improves the correct-
ness of the pricing and gives profitability and
competitive advantage, therefore increases the
overall management system of a company. Thus,
environmentally integrated manufacturing deci-
sions require for the consideration of technical,
economic and ecological aspects simultaneously
(Melnyk et al., 2003; Spengler et al., 1998; Wu
and Chang, 2004). Additionally, companies try to
avoid inefficiencies in the production and waste
removal charges as a result to decrease the cost
of unit production. Especially the companies us-
ing hazardous materials in their production have
started to consider environmentally integrated
manufacturing systems to decrease their impacts
on environment and to prevent pollution at source
directly.
Manufacturing decisions should not be made in
isolation from decisions in environmental manage-
ment. In recent years, many production planners
and decision makers have started to recognize the
role and significance of the integration of economic
and environmental efforts in a single production-
planning program. New concepts connecting
manufacturing practices, pollution control and
prevention and operations are recently being used
in order to increase the efficiency of converting
raw materials into products. Specifically, studies
are carried out in order to create decision support
tools for analyzing the effects of planning deci-
sions on the amount of product losses. Companies
are willing to organize their production systems
to enhance resource productivity by adopting an
environmental approach. Based on this kind of
approach, a company can include environmental
principles in the mission statement, incorporate
the cleaner production philosophy into product
and process design and, consequently, develop
an environmental business strategy in order to
gain competitive advantage. At this point, it is
pollution prevention and pollution control. Pol-
lution control covers the elimination of pollution
after the waste is generated. On the other hand,
pollution prevention covers the modification/re-
design of the production process and the introduc-
tion of new technologies throughout the product
life-cycle to identify the source of the problem.
A company adopting traditional pollution control
methods focuses on its activity on the short term.
In this context, the company sets as its main aim to
carry out environmental impact correcting actions
that do not entail the development of new skills
needed to manage new environmental processes.
Therefore, it is seen that traditional pollution con-
trol methods are practically inefficient compared
to prevention methods. Therefore it is clear that
preventing environmental damage is cheaper and
more effective than attempting to manage or fix it.
Pollution prevention has replaced the traditional
pollution control methods and has become an
important research topic for the process design
(Claver et al., 2007; Xigang and Zhaoling, 2000).
There are many studies demonstrating that pollu-
tion prevention is almost the most cost-effective
constituent of integrated waste management
strategies in different manufacturing systems (Ak-
kerman and van Donk, 2006; Dahab et al., 1994).
One step forward of pollution prevention is
the concept of cleaner production (CP). CP can
be described as the continuous application of an
integrated preventative environmental strategy
to processes, products and services to increase
efficiency and reduce risks to humans and the
environment. For production processes, CP
includes conserving raw materials and energy,
eliminating toxic raw materials, and reducing the
quantity and toxicity of all emissions and wastes
before they leave a process. For products, the CP
strategy focuses on reducing impacts along the
entire life cycle of the product, from raw materials
extraction to ultimate disposal of the product. In
CP applications, savings are often achieved with
little or no capital expenditure by simply chang-
ing management practices. Many successful case
