Business and environment

BRAINSTORMING

Work with an associate. Look at the opening photo and on a sheet of paper, write your answers to the following questions.

· List advantages to companies that obey environmental laws and take voluntary action to be "environmentally responsible."

· List reasons why companies are sometimes against environmental laws.

· When there are costs involved in obeying these laws, who is responsible for the expense?

· When there is disagreement about an environmental law, how are the controversies usually solved?

WORKING WITH CONCEPTS: ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION IN BUSINESS

The following articles are about environmental issues that have caused debates between environmentalists and businesses. Before you read, form a business team to discuss how to deal with the following situations.

1. Imagine you recently purchased property that you plan to use for business. Yesterday, you received an order from the government stating that your property is contaminated with toxic wastes and you must pay for the cleanup process before you can operate your business. List your possible resolutions to this situation.

2. You own a restaurant that does a lot of "to-go" business. Recently, your city council passed a law forbidding the use of polystyrene foam containers 'e, because they are an environmental hazard. So, you are now giving discounts to people who bring their own to-go containers, even if they are made of polystyrene. The town council and some of your competitors are upset at this practice and want you to attend a council meeting to discuss it. List solutions that might satisfy all of you.

3. Imagine it is against U.S. federal law to smoke in public places. You are a manager in a large hotel hosting a major international convention that will generate a great deal of revenue. You have been informed that many of the conventioneers will want to smoke, so you reserve additional "smoking areas" around the hotel. Consequently, several staff members have refused to work during the convention, saying that they will be unlawfully exposed to hazardous working conditions. How will you resolve this situation?

a. What type of environmental products do you usually buy?

b. What type of environmental products would you like to buy, but are not available?

BUSINESS AND ENVIRONMENT

There are some of the environmental issues we face today:

1. Pesticides often harm or kill fish and birds and can cause illness in children. Too much pesticide is dangerous to adults, so only safe levels are allowed keeping adults in mind, but such levels are still probably too dangerous for children. A 2011 study by UC Berkeley has shown that prenatal exposure of pesticides in pregnant women can also lower the IQ of their children.

2. Air pollution contaminates the air, despoils vegetation and crops, corrodes construction materials, and threatens our lives and health. A 2011 study by the EPA claims that the Clean Air Act saved over 160,000 lives in 2010, but many people still suffer illness and die from air pollution and more lives can be saved by stricter standards. We generally assume we get sick from allergies, bacteria, or viruses; but pollution is a very common cause of illness as well.

3. The ozone layer was damaged from chloroflourocarbons.

4. Carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gasses) are causing global warming.

5. Toxic chemicals in our environment cause many health issues.

6. Nuclear power plants require minding, processing, and transporting of nuclear materials that causes cancer in many people, and it’s unclear that our methods of disposing of nuclear waste are entirely safe.

According to 2007 research pollution could cause 40% of all death worldwide.

Companies are making their operations do more than just "no harm." They are performing an integral part of nature’s functioning.

We like to believe that the challenges we face--climate destabilization, natural resource depletion, waste accumulation--are unique to the human species. But nature was here first, providing a catalog of nontoxic materials, a playbook of clean manufacturing techniques, and ultimately a model for sustainable systems from its 3.8 billion years of R&D. Here are some inspiring solutions to our thorniest technological and systemic sustainability challenges through the idea of business ecology, the idea that businesses are part of the ecosystem and can only be sustainable by acting like a functioning part of nature.

There are many environmental moral issues relevant to business. They include

a) ecology,

b) traditional business attitudes towards the environment,

c) problems involving environmental abuse,

d) environmental protection,

e) methods to pay for environmental protection,

f) other issues involving environmental ethics.

Key environmental issues affecting business include industrial waste, sustainable development of raw materials and water and air emissions. These issues affect business because laws require businesses to change equipment and procedures to meet imposed standards, which costs businesses money. Many businesses undertake stricter changes in an effort to preserve the environment. These businesses pay for the protective and proactive environmental measures and attempt to recoup the expenses through consumer good will or the added consumer base gained from an environmentally friendly policy.

Businesses that manufacture products create, at some point in the manufacturing process, manufacturing waste. Environmental laws and good environmental citizenship prohibit the indiscriminate dumping of manufacturing byproduct, so businesses must decide how best to dispense with it. Many implement recycling programs, others sell what they can of the waste to other manufacturers who use it in their own manufacturing processes as raw material. Either way, the effect is additional cost to the business in man hours, procedures, equipment and handling all specific to moving the waste products out of the business manufacturing process and facilities.

Manufacturing processes often generate air and/or water emissions, which include particle or chemical-filled smoke, ash and particles and chemicals that seep into ground water through run-off. Environmental protection laws require businesses to protect the environment from exposure to these emissions. Remedial process include placing screens of specified gauges over smoke stacks, filtration of waste water and lining of retention ponds with clay and poly liners. New regulations are implemented frequently that require retrofitting of manufacturing facilities with increased protections, such as screens of even finer gauges and pond liners of newer and safer materials. All of these measures are costly to business and affect businesses first by decreasing profit margins.

The importance of environmental destruction is recognized by every theory of justice and every moral theory. Destroying the environment often violates our right to non-injury and endangers our health. Additionally, some people also think that it’s morally preferable to protect rather than harm nonhuman animals. Any moral system that is unable to admit that animals should be protected could be flawed.

Businesses have traditionally shown egregious indifference towards the environment. Environmental protection was rarely seen as an issue. A company would harm the environment to whatever extent was profitable, and they often harmed the environment despite the fact that it was unwarranted to do so. In particular, people saw the “natural world as a ‘free and unlimited good’”. People at one point thought that the world’s resources could be taken without end and without any morally significant harm done. Pollution could damage the environment, but the damage done was considered to be insignificant because the world was seen as such a large place.

In recent years growing public concern regarding environmental matters has caused many businesses to rethink their stand on environmental issues and to adopt environmentally responsible policies.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16