Environment Planning and Management

Citation

Chow, W.S. (2010), "Environment Planning and Management", Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 21 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/meq.2010.08321cae.001

Environment Planning and Management

Environment Planning and Management

Article Type: Books and resources From: Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, Volume 21, Issue 3

Christian N. MaduImperial College PressLondonJune 2007244 pp.ISBN 1-86094-671-2€40.99

The practice of behaving in an environmentally green way is our future. The Earth will no longer be a sustainable living environment for any creature soon, if we do not minimize the toxic waste, such as carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur dioxide, that we release as emissions into our air, water, and land at the speed we are doing today. The Greenhouse Effect (which has caused an escalation of the effect of recent global events such as the tsunami of 2004, and various earthquakes and typhoons) is perhaps the final signal from Earth warning us that we must act immediately in order to clean up our polluting activities.

The sustainability of a green environment can be accomplished through three main approaches: social responsibility, environmental protection, and economic progress. The concept of green environmental practice is not new in the literature. There are few textbooks that outline the concepts of planning and management in the context of green environmental practice. This textbook does so, authored by Madu (2007), goes beyond linking these two concepts together in also reviewing the different methodologies that researchers and practitioners can follow, so that the practice of environmental planning and management in organizations and industries is achievable. Two good examples of the effectiveness of these methodologies can be cited: one is the discussion of how to apply Deming’s PDCA (Plan, Do, Check and Act) to implement environmental planning, and the other is the use of a “fishbone diagram” to integrate the components for achieving the environmental life-cycle assessment in an organization. Another uniquely positive aspect of this textbook is that each chapter elaborates not only on the basic concepts of the subject, but also sheds light on the original sources for the development of these concepts in the real world, such as the development of environmental standard ISO 14000, and the development of the World Industry Council for the Environment.

The textbook has 11 chapters, which can be loosely grouped into three main parts. Part I is the introduction to the subject, comprising an initial introduction, as well as discussions of sustainable manufacturing, environmentally conscious manufacturing, and the ISO 14000 Model. Part II covers the concept of environmental planning and comprises four chapters on environmental planning, life-cycle assessment, design for environment I, and design for environment II. Part III has three chapters covering manufacturing strategies, environmental risk assessment and management, and competing on environmental management. The book’s contents are briefly reviewed below.

Chapter 1 is an introductory chapter that explicates the strategic context of the environmental management system, including the involvement of people and the various cost considerations. Chapter 2 is related to the sustainable development of the green environment, including its main components. Chapter 3 explores the reverse and inverse logistics that sustain environmentally conscious manufacturing. The development and essential concepts behind the ISO 14000 international standards for green environment practices are reviewed in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 addresses the concept of environmental planning, by emphasizing activities such as overall vision, stakeholders’ involvement, cost considerations, social responsibility, and planning issues. Chapter 6 extends the previous chapter by developing three assessment methods based on the “life-cycle analysis” concept: inventory analysis, impact assessment, and improvement analysis. A strategic framework that describes each procedural step to implement a life-cycle assessment is also provided. Chapters 7 and 8 concentrate on the design for the environment. The first part of this section focuses on how to design a green environment, whereas the second part relates to the implementation of the green environment in manufacturing, by using the business strategy of concurrent engineering. Chapter 9 further reveals some of the new manufacturing strategies that can be used as part of the strategic practices described in Chapter 8. The success of these new strategies is clearly dependent on the communication and exchange of information between all trading partners, including customers, vendors, and manufacturers. Chapter 10 covers the topic of environmental management, with an exploration of risk assessment based on ecological risk, industrial risk, and health risk. Chapter 11 focuses on the management of the green environment and covers three particular themes: social responsibility, product stewardship, and supplier participation.

The book clearly outlines both the concept of environmental planning and the management of it in the real world. Benefits and pitfalls are included in the relevant chapters, in order to bring these to the attention of both researchers and practitioners. Many management techniques are used to show how to implement these concepts, including flow charts, Deming’s plan-do-check-act, “fishbone diagram”, analytical hierarchy process, and examples of a Pareto chart and quality function deployment. Action boxes to demonstrate real-life cases, showing the implementation of environment planning and management, are included. This textbook should be adopted at the entrance level to green environment courses for both undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs in engineering and business schools. In particular, it will also be valuable to practitioners whose organizations have either implemented or are about to implement environmentally green manufacturing processes.

Wing S. ChowDepartment of Finance and Decision Sciences, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong(vwschow@hkbu.edu.hk)