Environment, Inc - sustainable development - Business and the Environment

Business Horizons, March-April, 1992 by William K. Reilly

Sustainable development has gained wide currency since the World Commission on Environmental and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission) made it the conceptual centerpiece of a 1987 report. To put it simply, sustainable development is development that occurs in harmony--those are the operative words--with the natural world. Gifford Pinchot, Teddy Roosevelt's Forest Service chief, defined conservation as the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest time--analogous to sustainable development. And Roosevelt himself said, "Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generation that come after us."

The principles of sustainable development will dominate the agenda this June in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, known as the Earth Summit, will engage world leaders on the issues of environmental protection, ecological degradation, and links to pervasive poverty and unchecked population growth.

The Bush administration has given a very high priority to ensuring that the environment is central in our foreign policy. One cannot over-estimate the hunger in the other countries for the benefits of U.S. experience in environmental policy. They want to learn from America--our expertise, our technology, even our failures. And we can sometimes learn from other countries.

To those who doubt the wisdom of pollution control--those who believe there is a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection--well, let them travel to Eastern Europe. Let them see the Vistula River in Poland, over 80 percent of it so corrosive that it is useless for even cooling machinery. Let them experience sulfur dioxide levels in Krakow, so high that 500-year-old monuments have crumbled in just 40 years. Let them confront Eastern Europe's high rates of infant mortality, lung disorders, worker absenteeism, and premature death. Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, not to mention Russia itself--these are entire nations now living in the dark shadow of an environmental catastrophe. The nations chose to forgo controls on pollution to stimulate economic growth. They ended up wrecking their economies even as they ravaged their environments.

Poland's former Environment Minister recently told me that the country's environmental contamination is causing a 15 percent drag on the nation's gross national product. We hear similar estimates from Russian officials. President Bush visited Poland and Hungary in 1989. He saw firsthand the size of the cleanup job confronting Eastern Europe, so he proposed a new center for information about cleanup technologies and the environmental implications of energy choices. He offered U.S. financial assistance to create this center. In September 1990, I represented the President at the formal opening of the center. I also went to Poland, where the U.S. is helping with air pollution control and providing new technology for Krakow's drinking water.

One of the lessons of Eastern Europe is that pollution is not an economic shortcut. In the long run, it will only drain economies and make living conditions unproductive.

POLLUTION PREVENTION

There is such a thing as capitalism with a green thumb. Nabisco founder Adolphus Green once said, "The officer of every corporation should feel in his heart--in his very soul--that he is responsible, not merely to make dividends for the stockholders of his company, but to enchance the general prosperity and the moral sentiment of the United States."

Through their commitment to the environment, many American business are fulfilling Green's vision. But companies still have payrolls to meet and books to balance. So it is especially pleasing to see environmental initiatives that realize the potential for the "Three P's." That's pollution prevention--at a profit.

A few months ago I spent an afternoon touring the facilities at Minnesota Minign and Manufacturing. 3M is a pioneer in corporate environmental responsibility, planning to invest $150 million by 1993 to install state-of-the-art pollution control equipment, a financial commitment that will reduce the company's air emissions by 70 to 75 percent of their 1987 levels. And 3M wants to cut 90 percent of all emissions by the end of the century, with an anticipated reduction in hazardous wastes of 50 percent by the same date. But I also learned recently of estimates that 3M's "Pollution Prevention Pays" strategy has saved the company over half a billion dollars since 1975 through the implementation of more than 2,500 environmentally and economically sound manufacturing changes--altering processes to avoid the generation of wastes that would have to be treated.

Similar results have been obtained by other companies. Carrier Corporation spent $500,000 in 1988 to eliminate toxic lubricants from its manufacture of ai conditioners. In the process, it slashed annual production costs by $1.2 million. And AT&T recently cut $3 million of its annual costs by eliminating an ozone-depleting compound used on its circuit boards.