New Tools for Environmental Protection Education, Information, and Voluntary Measures (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 17-48
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From page 17... ...
The service sector now dominates America's economy, supplying more than three-quarters of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and four-fifths of our employment (The Economist, 1994~.
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From page 18... ...
It has become commonplace for commentators to speak of a fundamental transformation now shaping our economy. The labels vying to capture this era include the "service economy" and the "postindustrial society," but the most commonly used name is the "information revolution" hailed as the third great economic revolution of human history.2 The agricultural revolution generated wealth from plowed fields, the industrial revolution from the mechanized production of material goods.
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From page 19... ...
First, there has been sustained growth in the service sector such that in relative terms it now dominates our nation's economic
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These results should not, on reflection, be surprising. The need for food did not go away at the end of the agricultural revolution nor has industrial activity dimmed in the brilliance of the information revolution's dawn.
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From page 21... ...
.5 If the economic infrastructure is changing, moving toward more information processing than material processing, then this should be reflected in less material consumption per unit of economic activity. In mathematical terms, the measures of material intensity should show decreasing slopes.
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From page 22... ...
The important corollary is that because of population growth and increasing economic activity, absolute resource consumption has actually increased, despite reductions in material intensity. As the WRI study concluded, "meaningful dematerialization, in the sense of an absolute reduction in natural resource use, is not yet taking place" (Adriaanse et al., 1998:2~.
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From page 23... ...
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND THE SERVICE SECTOR Despite the relative growth of the service sector and decline of manufacturing, the data clearly show that these factors have not led to a decrease in resource consumption. Hence, although the service economy may not mark a clear pathway toward sustainable development, it surely merits explicit consideration in environmental policy both because services are important sources of pollution and because they pose different challenges than traditional smokestack sources.
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From page 24... ...
CHANGES IN POLLUTION AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY Smokestack Services Electric utilities Federal express Hospitals Airlines Business Services Cumulative Services Insurance Fast food chains Financial services Dry cleaners Retail sales Dentist offices Law firms Hotels · High Cumulative environmental impact subject of the entire trading program of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments (U.S.
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From page 25... ...
In addition to the permits, there is considerable paperwork required for the company to report the presence of and risk management plans for the lead acid batteries in every BellAtlantic building.7 The point in raising these brief examples is not to argue that the regulation of smokestack services is unnecessary but, rather, that such regulation warrants special attention because of the potential for poor fit. RCRA, for example, was not written with services in mind.
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From page 26... ...
Many cumulative services may be viewed as simply concentrating everyday activities, such as those at a hotel or restaurant. The environmental impacts do not differ in kind from those of a household; they are simply magnified.
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From page 27... ...
In the face of such informational, compliance, and enforcement costs, however, a more common response to cumulative services has been no response at all. As the environmental manager for Palo Alto's treatment plant observes, "People [in wastewater treatment]
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Unlike smokestack sources, cumulative services by definition do not face significant environmental regulation and therefore expend few management resources on the subject. That is not to say, however, that services have no interest in improving their environmental performance.
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From page 29... ...
For example, charges of unsafe working conditions, child labor, and pitifully low wages have energized sneaker companies such as Reebok and Nike to improve the labor practices of their suppliers in Asia. Often these campaigns are directed at leverage services.
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Though the government does not have a large role to play, it can foster these voluntary developments. In particular, the EPA's voluntary programs for smokestack industries, such as the 33/50 initiative and Design for the Environment, may be worth adapting to the service sector.
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From page 31... ...
(cumulative services) Significant impacts upstream or downstream?
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From page 32... ...
In the pharmaceutical industry, contract manufacturing of key chemical inputs accounted for 50 to 60 percent of production in 1998 and is projected to reach 60 to 70 percent by 2005 (Van Arnum, 2000~. If environmental policymakers are looking for emerging industrial sectors, contract manufacturing is one that will have increasing importance.
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Who is responsible for the environmental performance and compliance of these systems and their products? The other possibility that has emerged is to completely decouple production codes from production.
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~ a' ~=1 ; mu'' (a) Counties representing 50 percent of allied automobile employment in 1980 EN E)
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Autos produced only in Detroit's mile-long factories will emerge from knockdown garage assembly shops in the Amazon and East Eighty-sixth Street in New York" (Moody and Morley, 1999~. It is not far fetched to imagine 10 to 20 years in the future, systems that store production codes on servers and allow the code to be downloaded to small-scale and personal fabrication devices, much in the way we download music today (we might describe this as an MP 3-D system)
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From page 36... ...
From an environmental standpoint, the positive aspect is that we could produce where needed, moving bits (production code) to atoms (production process)
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An incredible opportunity is appearing on the horizon. Let us assume that the management gurus and industrial researchers are right in their assessments of a rapidly globalizing service sector, a second industrial revolution, the deconstruction of value chains, an explosion in contract manufacturing, the personalization of fabrication, and the emergence of a digital economy.
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From page 38... ...
. 5 WRI researchers developed a new measurement unit of Total Material Requirements.
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From page 39... ...
economy is decoupled from material inputs." OECD studied the global material intensity for steel and wood from 1970 through 1992. Throughout this period, although the material intensities of wood and steel showed a negative slope, the "total world materials consumption rose by 38%" (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1998:64-65)
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From page 40... ...
Department of Commerce. 2000 Statistical Abstract of the United States.
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From page 41... ...
56. Palo Alto, CA: Regional Water Quality Control Plant.
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From page 42... ...
1987 The role of the service sector in economic development: Similarities and differences by development category. In The Emerging Service Economy, O
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Proenvironmental social marketing often has been controversial in the United States. This is because people sometimes disagree sharply about whether it is proper for government agencies to use communication and diffusion instruments stronger than mere information provision for environmental policy purposes.
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Public environmental education is a very different strategy conceptually from social marketing. As Ramsey and Hungerford define environmental education in Chapter 9, its main goal is to promote responsible citizenship behavior.
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From page 47... ...
Andrews, Stevens, and Wise (Chapter 10) develop a concept of "community-based environmental education" that is actually a hybrid of the educational and social marketing strategies.
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From page 48... ...
Smith 1999 Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing. Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Can.: New Society Publishers.
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