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countries. The ISO 14001 approach is much like the integrated approaches
discussed in this topic * :
1. Establishing an environmental policy that encourages systematic solutions
2. Reviewing actual and potential environmental outcomes from the en-
terprise's operations
3. Setting goals
4. Preparing and implementing plans to achieve these goals
5. Monitoring the progress toward these goals
6. Reporting
7. Continuously improving and feeding back to the earlier steps
It appears that EMSs are designed to be integrated and systematic. They
are means of finding ways to prevent problems and of seeking better ways of
getting results.
* N. P. Cheremisinoff and A. Bendavid-Val, Green Profits: The Manager's Handbook for ISO 14001
and Pollution Prevention , Butterworth-Heinemann, Burlington, MA, 2001.
Harkening back to Aldo Leopold's land ethic, we are reminded that the use of
land is dependent on the values placed on it. The incremental effects of a number
of highly visible environmental insults along with myriad small ones that are not
very noticeable in their own right, have changed the landscape of environmental
awareness. Public projects such as dams and highways have caused incremental
but dramatic changes in the environment. With the growing awareness the public
demand for environmental safeguards and remedies for environmental problems
encouraged an expectation of a greater role for government. A number of laws
were on the topics prior to the 1960s, such as early versions of federal legislation
to address limited types of water and air pollution, and some solid waste issues,
such as the need to eliminate open dumping. In fact, key legislation to protect
waterways and riparian ecosystems was written at the end of the nineteenth
century in the form of the Rivers and Harbors Act (the law that set the stage for
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to permit proper dredging operations, later
enhanced by Section 404 of the Clean Water Act).
The real growth, however, followed the tumultuous decade of the 1960s. Care
for the environment had become a social cause, akin to the civil rights and anti-
war movements. Major public demonstrations on the need to protect “Spaceship
Earth” encouraged elected officials to address environmental problems, exempli-
fied by air pollution “inversions” that capped polluted air in urban valleys, leading
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