Environment and Business (Routledge Introductions to Environment)

237 Pages·2000·2.33 MB·English

by  Alasdair Blair

Environment and Business
Increasingly, the public are becoming aware of the interactions and conflicts between business and the
environment. Controversies, such as BSE, fox hunting and GM crops, highlight the growing importance
these issues are assuming in everyday life. Further examples are government transport policy and the
growing tourism and leisure industries. At the same time, the public are now consumers of the environment,
for which they are willing to pay. Business has seen the need to take on a ‘green mantle’, while at the same
time the environmental movement has refined its opinions of business.
Environment and Business examines in depth the ways in which business, industry, the physical
environment, environmentalism and social change have evolved alongside each other. Business responses to
environmental influences fall within a spectrum, between attempts to ignore external pressures, to viewing
the changes as an opportunity. Business is not seen as a uniform activity. Many books restrict their coverage
to manufacturing industries’ relationship with the environment—this innovative text widens the debate.
Special attention is paid to both the primary industries which are in close contact with the environment and
to the tertiary industries which now make up the bulk of the economy and which are shown to be subject to
environmental influences in numerous ways.
Environment and Business assumes no previous knowledge of business studies, to discuss how
businesses and the environment interact. It introduces students to a range of beliefs, rather than advocating a
single approach. The authors use boxed case studies to highlight how business practice and the environment
interact at levels from local to global, with examples from multinational companies, government bodies,
national charities and local enterprise.
Alasdair Blair and David Hitchcock both lecture at the University of Westminster.
Routledge Introductions to Environment Series Published and
Forthcoming Titles
Titles under Series Editors:
Rita Gardner and A.M.Mannion
Environmental Science texts
Atmospheric Processes and Systems
Natural Environmental Change
Biodiversity and Conservation
Ecosystems
Environmental Biology
Using Statistics to Understand the Environment
Forthcoming:
Coastal Systems (November 2000)
Environmental Physics (May 2001)
Titles under Series Editor:
David Pepper
Environment and Society texts
Environment and Philosophy
Environment and Politics
Energy, Society and Environment
Environment and Social Theory
Gender and Environment
Environment and Business
Environment and Tourism
Environment and Planning (September 2001)
Routledge Introductions to Environment Series
Environment and Business
Alasdair Blair
and
David Hitchcock
London and New York
First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2001 Alasdair Blair and David Hitchcock
The right of Alasdair Blair and David Hitchcock to be identified as
the Authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Blair, A.M. (Alasdair McMillan), 1950–
Environment and business/Alasdair Blair, David Hitchcock.
p. cm. —(Routledge introductions to environment series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Industrial management—Environmental aspects. 2. Environmental policy.
I. Hitchcock, David. II. Title. III. Series.
HD30.255.B53 2000
658.4′08—dc21
00–038256
ISBN 0-203-00533-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-20830-0 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-20831-9 (pbk)
To Gordon Lloyd Blair (1918–1997) and George Henry Hitchcock (1924–
1999). Two men who never met, who never even knew each other but who
through the support and guidance to their sons made this book possible.
Contents
List of figures vii
List of tables viii
List of boxes ix
Series editor’s preface x
List of abbreviations xii
Introduction: the environment and business 1
1 Environment and business: the nature of the relationships 5
2 The changing relationships through time 22
3 Environmental business perspectives: assets, costs and externalities 39
4 Environmental business necessities: the pressures which cannot be ignored 66
5 Environmental business opportunities: business becomes pro-active 89
6 Primary industries: using resources directly 107
7 Secondary industries: adding value and carrying the burden 129
8 Tertiary industries: the hidden environmental issues 142
9 Environmental business 158
10 Environment and business: the future of the relationships 181
Glossary 195
Websites 199
Bibliography 202
Index 215
Figures
0.1 Different ways of seeing the environment 4
1.1 Impact and dependence on the environment 10
3.1 Relationship between the internal and external business environment 42
3.2 Examples of spatial externality fields 51
3.3 Emissions trading theory 53
4.1 The relationship between external pressures on business and behaviour 68
4.2 The origins of the external influences upon business 69
4.3 The business response cycle 71
4.4 Power and effectiveness in influencing decision-making 75
5.1 Alternative business decisions for environmental business opportunities 93
5.2 Constraints to business seizing opportunities 96
5.3 The contrast between the technical fix and fixing the causes 104
6.1 Models of environmental determinism 108
6.2 Relationship between farm system and the environment 113
6.3 Behavioural differences according to farmer type 116
6.4 Farmers’ choices in pluriactivity 125
7.1 The construction cycle 137
8.1 The retailing environment—overview 146
8.2 Environmental pressures on retailing 151
8.3 Environmental opportunities for retailing 154
9.1 CANPOs-The Third Way of conservation? 162
9.2 Profit and preservation: conserving the English country house 168
9.3 Environmental business clubs in the UK 176
9.4 The Groundwork Trust network 177
Tables
1.1 Companies’ responses to environment: the range of policies 12
1.2 Distribution of Gross Domestic Product between industrial sectors in selected countries, 1995 16
1.3 Business/environmental philosophies 18
2.1 Employment in the three industrial sectors in the UK 27
2.2 Comparative developments in environment, business, agriculture, industry and environmentalism 37
over time
3.1 A typology of costs, assets and externalities relating to the environment 40
3.2 Examples of environmental assets, costs and externalities 41
3.3 Public costs—expenditure on the environment in the UK and Germany, 1990 48
3.4 Expenditure on the environment by different groups in the UK, 1990–91 48
5.1 Business attitudes to the environment 94
5.2 Environmental objectives and opportunities 94
5.3 Restrictions on mushroom pickers in the Olympic Peninsula, Washington State 102
5.4 Personal behaviour of consumers in relation to the environment 103
6.1 Primary industries and resource management 110
6.2 Comparative environmental impacts of different types of beef production systems in New York State, 114
Brazil and the Sahel
6.3 Uptake of agri-environmental schemes in England, 1994–98 119
6.4 Pollution pressures on farming 121
7.1 Main environmental impacts from various construction works 135
8.1 A typology of service industries 144
8.2 Environmental impacts of service sector industries 145
8.3 Geographical patterns of retailing 147
8.4 Sainsbury’s air emissions 149
8.5 Typical store energy use 149
8.6 Sainsbury’s road transport and the environment 149
9.1 English CANPOs’ activities 163
9.2 Woodland Trust sources of income 164
9.3 Media and the environment 172
Boxes
2.1 King Coal and the Industrial Revolution 28
2.2 Railways, the Industrial Revolution and the environment 30
3.1 Brent Spar 46
3.2 Monsanto and genetically modified organisms 46
3.3 Royal Dutch Shell environmental policy 58
3.4 Green accounting guidelines produced by the Society of Management Accountants, Canada 60
3.5 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s CER score card system 62
5.1 The National Trust’s business enterprises 93
5.2 English Heritage and the movies 97
5.3 Envirologic—using legislation to create opportunities 99
5.4 Big game hunting and conservation 100
5.5 DETR and sustainable business 101
6.1 Australia’s Landcare scheme 119
6.2 Late twentieth-century agricultural technology 123
6.3 Farm Holiday Bureau (FHB) 125
7.1 The environment preference method 139
8.1 Retail location change and causes of change 147
8.2 The Chimes shopping centre development and the environment 155
9.1 Business methods for conservation organizations 162
9.2 The Gilt and the Gingerbread—Beaulieu: conservation and commerce 167
9.3 EBI Consultancy 174
10.1 Corporate Environmental Engagement 190
10.2 Lobbying against the climate change levy 190