Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
essential to ensure a planned, focused transition into sustainable growth
(avoiding ad hoc “greenwashing” projects).
Accepting the new paradigm with changed emphasis is easier when market
success of the company is strongly linked to the triple bottom line. This
might be through branding advantages (where consumers will prefer the
“sustainable” products over an unsustainable one) or shareholder
preference in response to or ahead of possible changes in the regulatory
environment. With a highly wired set of consumers and stakeholders, who
are becoming increasingly environmentally conscious, the future success of
a business can be influenced by the triple bottom line. 7
2.3 MODELS ON IMPLEMENTING SUSTAINABILITY
Corporate repositioning that can facilitate this change can be appreciated
using a production possibilities frontier (PPF). PPF is a conceptual graphic
used to illustrate the trade-offs between the production of a pair of
alternative products (e.g., guns vs. bread) by a notional business entity.
Assuming the available resources and the manufacturing technology to be
invariant, making more of one will necessarily reduce the amount of the
other. The business must decide the mix of these products it must produce.
In this case, one of the products is “environmental quality” (EQ), and the
other is “market profitability” used as a proxy to profitability. The former
is notional product that is essentially a measure of the avoided adverse
impacts ontheenvironment. Thus,minimal useofenergy andincreased use
of renewable resources, recyclability at end of life, lack of toxic components,
andlowlevelsofexternalities areallassumedtocontributetoahypothetical
product reflected by this single measure of EQ. As it is inversely related to
environmentaldeterioration,highnumericalvaluesofEQmeanlowadverse
impacts of production on the environment.
Theplot( Fig.2.4 )isaqualitative representation oftherelationship between
EQ (the avoided adverse impact on environment) and the market goods
produced. The assumption here is that increasing the production of the
latter will lead to an increase in adverse impacts on the environment.
Multiple choices or trade-offs are possible within this simple model. The
area under the curve indicates all the production possibilities available to
the firm. Points on the curve (such as C ) represent a set of trade-offs with
the highest efficiency, using the best available technology, and are therefore
 
 
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