Environmental protection beyond the smokestack: Addressing the impact of the service economy

Corporate Environmental Strategy

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 20-37

  Salzman, James ^a  

^a AMERICAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0011583027     PISSN: 10667938     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S1066-7938(00)80112-8     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Dorothy Riddle, "The Role of the Service Sector in Economic Development: Similarities and Differences by Development Category," in Orio Giarini, The Emerging Service Economy, 1987; and "The Manufacturing Myth," The Economist, March 19, 1994.
2. Dorothy Riddle, "The Role of the Service Sector in Economic Development: Similarities and Differences by Development Category," in Orio Giarini, The Emerging Service Economy, 1987; and "The Manufacturing Myth," The Economist, March 19, 1994.
3. U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistical Administration, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1997; and Robert Rowthorn and Ramana Ramaswamy, "Deindustrialization-Its Causes and Implications," International Monetary Fund Working Paper WP/97/42, 1997, (citing OECD Historical Statistics, 1960-94).
4. Thomas Stewart, "The New Era: Welcome to the Revolution," Fortune, December 13, 1993.
5. See Endnote 1. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an international governmental organization dedicated to the promotion of policies that expand growth in market-based economies. Its twenty-nine members include all of the major industrialized modern economies.
6. As Martin Carnoy describes, "[t]he second feature of the new world economy - and another secular trend that has accelerated in recent years - is the shift, in advanced capitalist societies, from material production to information-processing activities, both in terms of proportion of GNP and in the proportion of the population employed in such activities." In Martin Carnoy et al., The New Global Economy in the Information Age, 1993.
7. David Rejeski, "An Incomplete Picture," The Environmental Forum, September/October 1997.
8. Stephen S. Cohen and John Zysman, Manufacturing Matters: The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy, 1987. In absolute terms, from 1970-1996 employment in services more than doubled, from twenty million to forty-five million workers.
9. The Statistical Abstract lists the fastest growing occupations as home health aides, computer engineers and analysts, physical therapists, systems analysts, and correction officers. U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistical Administration, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995.
10. OECD, Globalization and the Environment: Perspectives from OECD and Dynamic Non-Member Economies, 1998. As another example, noted industrial ecologist Brad Allenby argues that the substitution of information for energy and materials "raises the possibility that the service oriented economy - the Information Revolution -and sustainability are synergistic… [G]reater environmental efficiency will require as an enabling capability the Information Revolution, while the latter will in turn be strongly encouraged by the need for the former, and that the two will be integrated into an economic structure heavily focused on services." See Brad Allenby, "Clueless," Environmental Forum, September, 1997, p. 36.
11. OECD, Globalization and the Environment: Perspectives from OECD and Dynamic Non-Member Economies, 1998. As another example, noted industrial ecologist Brad Allenby argues that the substitution of information for energy and materials "raises the possibility that the service oriented economy - the Information Revolution - and sustainability are synergistic… [G]reater environmental efficiency will require as an enabling capability the Information Revolution, while the latter will in turn be strongly encouraged by the need for the former, and that the two will be integrated into an economic structure heavily focused on services." See Brad Allenby, "Clueless," Environmental Forum, September, 1997, p. 36.
12. The rise of services and relative decline of manufacturing has been overestimated for two main reasons -failure to capture outsourcing of services by manufacturers and loose definitions for SIC codes.
13. See 1995 Statistical Abstract, pages 748, 759.
14. Peter Drucker, "The Age of Social Transformation," The Atlantic Monthly, November, 1994.
15. For other good examples, see generally, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker et al., Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use, 1997.
16. Albert Adriaanse et al., Resource Flows: The Material Basis of Industrial Economies, 1998.
17. The WRI researchers developed a new measurement unit of Total Material Requirements (TMR). This quantifies both the direct and indirect use of natural resources flowing through an economy. Direct material requirements include feedstock resources in the production process such as grain, copper, coal, and gas. Indirect material requirements include so-called, "hidden flows." These are natural resources that are not sold as commodities and never enter the economy, such as overburden and waste from extractive activities, biomass from crop harvesting and logging, soil erosion from agriculture, and earth moved during construction.
18. See Harlan Cleveland, "The Twilight of Hierarchy," in B. Guile, ed., Information Technologies and Social Transformation, 1985.
19. See Iddo Wernick et al., "Materialization and Dematerialization: Measures and Trends," Daedalus, 1996.
20. Put another way, GNP has grown faster than population. Thus measures of material intensity will be more impressive than measures of per capita consumption. What matters for the environment, of course, is total consumption.
21. See Endnote 14. In fact, direct inputs have been growing in parallel with economic growth.
22. Alan Durning, "How Much Is Enough?" 29, 38, 1992; M. Janicke et al, "Dirty Industries: Patterns of Change in Industrial Countries," Environmental and Resource Economics, 1997; OECD, Economic Globalization and the Environment, 1998; and Jesse Ausubel, "The Liberation of the Environment," Daedelus, 1996.
23. Alan Durning, "How Much Is Enough?" 29, 38, 1992; M. Janicke et al, "Dirty Industries: Patterns of Change in Industrial Countries," Environmental and Resource Economics, 1997; OECD, Economic Globalization and the Environment, 1998; and Jesse Ausubel, "The Liberation of the Environment," Daedelus, 1996.
24. Alan Durning, "How Much Is Enough?" 29, 38, 1992; M. Janicke et al, "Dirty Industries: Patterns of Change in Industrial Countries," Environmental and Resource Economics, 1997; OECD, Economic Globalization and the Environment, 1998; and Jesse Ausubel, "The Liberation of the Environment," Daedelus, 1996.
25. Alan Durning, "How Much Is Enough?" 29, 38, 1992; M. Janicke et al, "Dirty Industries: Patterns of Change in Industrial Countries," Environmental and Resource Economics, 1997; OECD, Economic Globalization and the Environment, 1998; and Jesse Ausubel, "The Liberation of the Environment," Daedelus, 1996.
26. See generally Paul Ehrlich, et al., "Knowledge and the Environment," Ecological Economics, 1999.
27. This example was developed by the father of mathematical economics, William Jevons, in his 1865 work, The Coal Question. As cited in Herbet Inhaber and Harry Saunders, "The Road to Nowhere," The Sciences, November/December, 1994.
28. Raju Narisetti, "Xerox Copiers Go Digital to Fight Off Printers," The Wall Street Journal Europe, May 13, 1998.
29. See 42 U.S.C. 401-416 (1998).
30. See 42 U.S.C. 202-216 (1998).
31. See 42 U.S.C. 6922 et seq. (1998).
32. Michael van Biema and Bruce Greenwald, "Managing Our Way to Higher Service-sector Productivity," Harvard Business Review, July-August, 1997.
33. Please see 〈http://www.oit.doe.gov/industries. shtml〉.
34. See generally Lynton K. Caldwell, International Environmental Policy: Emergence and Dimensions, 2d ed., 1990.
35. As an example of the enormous quantities of materials that pass through the McDonald's system, in 1994 its supplier of packaging for fruit pies lightweighted the package. This small change resulted in an annual savings of fifty-five tons of CFC-free expanded polystyrene. Please see http://www.enviroweb.org/mcspotlightna/company/publications/mcfact_section7. html#S7c.
36. The story of the silver contamination in San Francisco Bay is recounted in David Rejeski, "Mars, Materials and Morality Plays," Journal of Industrial Ecology, 1998.
37. Palo Alto Regional Water Quality Control Plant, Clean Bay Plan, 1998.
38. Personal communication Kelly Moran, Manager of the Pollution Prevention Program, April 14, 1999.
39. See Endnote 6.
40. Please see Bruce Guile and Jared Cohon, "Sorting Out a Service-Based Economy," in Marian Chertow and Daniel Esty (eds.), Thinking Ecologically, 1997. Prior to becoming a law professor, the author served as the environmental manager for a major consumer products company. The company had a special sales office in a small town in Arkansas for the simple reason that Walmart's purchasing office was located there. If, for whatever reason, Walmart requested a change in product formulation or packaging, there was an immediate and compliant response. This represents a sharp break from the earlier balance of power in the consumer goods market. The retail trade has traditionally been highly fragmented. As a result, companies such as Procter & Gamble or Coca Cola, because of the importance of their products to consumers, generally held the upper hand in negotiating with retailers.
41. See Endnote 6.
42. See Exec. Order No. 12,873, 58 Fed. Reg. 54,911 (1993). The Order requires every executive agency to practice waste prevention and recycling as well as promote the market for recovered materials through its procurement process.
43. "Interest Grows in Label for Products from Sustainable Forests," ENDS Report, January, 1998.
44. Please see http://www.kinkos.com/about/action. html.
45. Please see http://cyberzone.net/wharton/CVX/Nike/index2.html.
46. The Agreement between Rainforest Action Network, Mitsubishi Motor Sales of America, and Mitsubishi Electric America, November 12, 1997 (on file with author).
47. Barton Crockett, "Unionbancal Faces Boycott Over Mitsubishi Ties," The American Banker, May 10, 1996.
48. Please see http://www.epa.gov/dfe/.