Environmental Management in European Companies: Success Stories and Evaluation (Algebra, Logic, and Applications)

Over the past decade, the greening of industry has become both an issue in scientific and political debate and a generic substantive development in industry itself. This study is the product of an international collaborative research project investigating exemplary cases of successful environmental management in European companies in Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, and Latvia with the aim of discovering the reasons and dynamics underlying them and the role environmental policy did and could play. Providing the background and context of the research project, the nine case studies concern various companies of different sizes and from different industrial branches and describe the social processes leading to substantive environmental achievements and corresponding environmental management systems. This study also evaluates the success stories in a comparative empirical, as well as theoretical, perspective with an environmental policy orientation. Case studies examine the role of a company's internal and external determinants, explaining successful corporate environmental management on the micro-level. Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Contents......Page 5 PREFACE......Page 8 SUMMARY......Page 10 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS......Page 16 Background and Context......Page 18 Conceptual Introduction......Page 20 Evolution of Environmental Policy and Environmental Management......Page 36 Project Design, Procedures and Development......Page 58 Success Stories......Page 70 Amecke Fruchtsaft: Economical Pathway into an Ecological Optimum of Returnable-Bottle Systems......Page 72 Diessner Farben und Lacke GmbH und Co. KG: Recycling Paint Sludge and Reducing Pollutants......Page 92 ABC-Coating: Developing and Diffusing Water-Borne Coating Systems......Page 112 Glasuld: Resource Management and Eco-Auditing in Glass-Wool Production......Page 136 Eco-Balance Sheet and Implementation of Eco-Controlling in the KUNERT Group......Page 160 Hertie and The BUND: The History of an Uncommon Cooperation......Page 178 The Environmental Factor in the Designing of Passenger Cars by NedCar......Page 200 The Internalisation of Environmental Management at GE Plastics Europe......Page 220 Environmental Management at the Ciba Corporation......Page 240 Comparative Evaluation......Page 260 Typical and Varying Actors and Structures......Page 262 Comparison with Other Case Studies of Environmental Management......Page 278 Determinants and Dynamics of Successful Environmental Management......Page 296 Perspectives for Environmental Management......Page 308 Any Generalizable Pattern of Successful Environmental Management?......Page 322 Significance of, and Implications and Recommendations for Environmental Policy......Page 330 INDEX......Page 344 This study examines the international greening of industry and investigates the reasons and dynamics behind nine different case studies of corporate environmental management success stories. The book takes an in-depth look at the social processes leading to these environmental initiatives, and how innovation can overcome difficulties of policy implementation