Many factors motivate enterprises to embrace environmental management. Compliance with environmental legislation may simply be a precondition for the firm to operate. Critical examination of production processes can bring the firm cost benefits and help it to avoid environmental catastrophes, the cost of which, in the worst case, might have to be borne by society. Taking the environment into consideration may generate completely new products for the company, of which one example is green electricity produced using renewable sources of energy.
"Environmental management also has a positive impact on workers' well-being and the company's image. A good environmental image is an advantage when a company is competing for young, environmentally aware specialists," underlines Hanna-Leena Pesonen, Professor of Corporate Environmental Management.
Motivation may also flow from a company CEO's personal ethical ambitions. For instance, Anita Roddick, founder of the international cosmetics-branch company Body Shop, was opposed to animal testing and a firm advocate of fair trade and environmental protection. Body Shop has maintained its brand as a business that operates in an ethical manner, even though it became part of L'Oreal in 2006.
Corporate environmental management is all about recognising the impacts business activity and a company's products have on the environment. The management process involves controlling these impacts and measures by which the load on the environment can be reduced.
In recent years Pesonen has noticed a clear change in companies' thinking. "Just a few years ago some corporate leaders were still of the opinion that taking the environment into account means extra costs for the company. Now views of that kind are no longer to be heard."
In many western countries the early years of corporate environmental management were a time characterised by contradictions. In Finland legislation was initially passed to limit emissions from heavy industry affecting the watercourse. "In past years the forest industry in particular had to modify its industrial processes as a result of watercourse pollution," Pesonen explains.
Environmental investments in the paper industry also accelerated customers' demand for the use of chlorine-free bleaching, greater recycling, and the conservation of ancient forests. Nowadays the focus of interest is the impact, broadly taken, of human kind on nature. The centre of attention here is not simply heavy industry but all corporate activity, products, associated production processes and impacts arising from use. "We're dealing with a difficult equation which involves the environment, the economy and social responsibility. How can this equation be made to function in such a way that we achieve a win-win situation?" Pesonen asks.
Corporate environmental management frequently fails for the reason that companies are in pursuit of quick profits, and because certain people simply shirk their responsibility. "Short-term economic thinking makes environmental management more difficult, since investments are considerable and long payback times have to be accepted. Fortunately consumer awareness is growing the whole time, which puts pressure on industry to pay proper attention to the environment."
Photo: "Studies in Corporate Environmental Management were introduced at the University of Jyväskylä's School of Business and Economics in autumn 1995, and were the first of their kind in the Nordic countries. The international Master's Degree Programme in Corporate Environmental Management is a strongly multidisciplinary degree programme on which approximately half the students are from abroad", stresses Professor Hanna-Leena Pesonen.
words and photo by Timo Sillanpää