Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

See if you can answer a few questions about your employer. What environmental
damage and benefits does your company cause, on and off its premises? Are
its suppliers and waste disposal companies eco-friendly? How much waste
carbon dioxide does the company emit for each thousand pounds of revenue?
Are there company bicycles? Does the mileage payment system encourage the
use of big, wasteful cars? Does it penalise use of public transport? Would
the company pay people to come to work using less environmentally damaging
vehicles?

Now try some harder questions. Would the company fail if rivals became
more environmentally aware? Does it depend on other companies’ excessive
waste for its jobs and profits? Is the company pension put into green investments?
What accidents at work could put the environment at risk?

Answering such questions will be important to companies try-ing to win
the latest British standard, BS 7750, for ‘environmen-tal management systems’.
The specification takes up six pages, but it is ‘flexible enough to cover
fish-and-chip shops as well as large industrial corporations’, according
to Chris Sheldon, manager of environmental initiatives at the British Standards
Institution. But that flexibility may be a crucial weakness.

The BSI does not normally pilot its standards, but the impact of this
one is expected to be so great that 140 companies from 25 industrial sectors
are testing it for a year to make the standard as widely applicable and
easy to operate as possible. Some hope to have the BS 7750 logo on their
letterheads in early 1994, though none actually has it yet because an external
system of accreditation and certification has not been finalised. In the
meantime, four companies which are piloting the standard – British Rail,
United Engineering Steels (Britain’s biggest steel recycler), Rolls-Royce
Aerospace and Texaco – presented their initial findings at a con-ference
at Regent’s College in February.

The standard was launched publicly a year ago, and has already divided
opinions. Some management consultants have christened it ‘the green daughter
of quality’, seeing it as the by-product of high-quality goods and services.
But critics claim that even environmentally filthy businesses can get the
new standard – so long as they write down precisely how filthy they are,
promise to do better and describe how they intend to improve. BS 7750 will
be a voluntary standard which, essentially, will confirm that an organisation
has an environmental policy and complies with it. So the standard cannot
label specific products (unlike the European Community’s proposed Eco-label),
nor will it indicate BSI approval of a company’s effect on the environment.
But it will show that a company is thinking, communicating, measuring and
acting on its environmental performance.

The standard comprises three elements: an environmental policy, a documented
environmental management system, and a register of effects on the environment.
Together, they commit the company to cycles of self-improvement by internal
environmental auditing.

The environmental policy is a public ‘statement of intent’. Because
it is the only part of the BS 7750 information which must be made publicly
available, some companies’ draft policy is scant, covering barely one side
of A4 paper. To provide evidence for assessors, a company must document
its environmental management system – the people and procedures with which
it keeps tabs on its significant environmental effects such as emissions,
wastes, smells, noises, energy use, and impact on ecosystems. This ‘register
of effects’ will cover not only its normal daily routine, but eventually
its past record as well as potential hazards from accidents or emergencies.
Known as ‘cradle-to-grave plus incidentals’, this approach is seen by the
companies piloting the standard as one of its biggest strengths compared
with selective or ad hoc environmental management.

Using the register, the company sets itself specific targets and dates,
such as cutting carbon dioxide emissions by a fixed percentage each year.
The company does not have to disclose these targets because the standard
depends on self-regulation. But the BSI realises that companies may cynically
set themselves ridiculously small targets – say, 0.1 per cent reductions
in emissions. In such cases it may decide to publish them: ‘Cynical manipulation
would be labelled as such by public opinion,’ says Sheldon. For corporate
environmental managers, those targets will be their biggest challenge and
potentially greatest source of external criticism.

The company then audits its internal and external performance, reviews
and upgrades its policy, performance, management systems and targets at
appropriate intervals and, in theory, its environmental damage spirals
downwards in a virtuous circle. The business advantages, according to the
BSI, are cost savings through lower insurance premiums as risks are reduced,
increased energy efficiency and waste reduction, increased customer confidence,
and a greater chance of complying with future legislative standards.

Tony Jaggers, Rolls-Royce’s environmental manager, reported that perhaps
the hardest part of the standard was knowing when to stop the cradle-to-grave
analysis. ‘How far upstream and downstream do you go?’ he asked. For example,
how closely should you assess the environmental probity of a manufacturer
of a paper cup which you intend to buy? Will you insist that your cup supplier
also holds BS 7750? When you dispose of the cup, will you be similarly concerned
about who then deals with it?

This might set off an avalanche of interdependent businesses seeking
only to deal with other holders. Jaggers says: ‘I think it will snowball.’
But how honest will the companies in the final layers of snow be?

One major consequence may be that companies will reduce their use of
particularly harmful materials. A single company’s refusal to use CFCs or
asbestos could break the whole cradle-to-grave chain of supply and demand.
Whether this will result in, for example, an acceleration in the reduction
of CFC use – ahead of international schedules – remains to be seen.

Another question is how to compare effects. For example, it is still
unclear whether disposable cups or china cups are more environmentally friendly.
On a larger scale, some companies may resort to spinning their most polluting
businesses off into separate arms so that the results of the remainder compare
more favourably within their particular sector. Again, the BSI cannot prevent
that, but Sheldon thinks adverse publicity will show such organisations
up.

Another concern that the standard skates around is secrecy and disclosure,
which are of major concern to both industrialists and environmentalists
– though from opposing perspectives. Apart from a few words of policy, the
results of businesses’ environmental audits and the environmental effects
register will not be publicly available. The situation is different in the
US, which has a Toxic Releases Inventory from which British environmentalists
glean much about American companies operating in Britain. Most of the information
obtained by BS 7750 will remain a commercial secret, to be selectively revealed
in corporate environmental reports.

Mark Fisher MP sponsored the recent bill on freedom of information which
contains a clause requiring companies to list their environmental prosecutions
in their annual reports. He says it is ‘ridiculous that we can’t get detailed
environmental information about companies operating in Britain’. Steve Warshal,
editor of Greenpeace Business, is scathing: ‘Corporate environmental reports
which do exist are totally self-serving. ‘

Jaggers, however, disagrees. ‘I’m not sure that this particular British
standard is the right place for a public access clause,’ he says. ‘What
you decide to tell the outside world should be between you, your customers
and your PR department. While BS 7750 may sometimes stray into PR, important
commercial production secrets can be revealed by too much disclosure.’ Precise
analysis of a chemicals com-pany’s waste output, for example, can give rivals
vital clues about production techniques. He accepts that secrecy about who
is emitting how much of a pollutant is going to be a point of contention,
and adds: ‘Companies must earn a reputation for honesty.’

Partial or complete honesty? Some companies are nervous that meeting
the standard will reveal more about environmental transgressions than they
would like. One senior industrialist at the conference commented: ‘You can
be sure that when the lawyers get their hands on the results of your first
BS 7750 audit, they’ll want to shred the lot.’ The BSI intends to check
compliance with stated targets every six months. Just what penalties eco-fiddlers
will face, beyond the loss of their certification, is undecided.

Indeed the gaps in some recent corporate environmental audits are sometimes
larger than what remains. For example, when Texaco does a cradle-to-grave
analysis of its environmental effects, will it consider those of the exhaust
gases produced by burning the petrol it sells? There is a get-out clause
for such companies: the BS 7750 standard can be site or business-based,
applied only to the management systems for monitoring environmental effects
rather than the effects themselves.

Beyond the question of disclosure of information gained from operating
a voluntary standard lies the larger one of whether or not to make such
a standard compulsory. Kerry Packing, Greenpeace’s toxics campaigner, says
bluntly: ‘While they can be useful, these sorts of standards are sometimes
used quite cynically – as corporate greenwash. What we need now are hard
concrete deadlines and timetables. These must come from government. There’s
no substitute for tight legislation.’

On a more human level, all the participants at the conference agreed
that the key to a successful environment management system was board-level
commitment. But it also emerged that environmental issues brought management
and workers together in a way which had positive spin-offs for more contentious
areas such as industrial relations.

At the BSI, Sheldon is confident about the broad appeal of environmental
management systems: ‘BS 7750 means new alliances within and beyond the shop
floor. People can take environmental principles home with them. They own
them. Some people even say that BS 7750 is a Trojan horse which puts ethical
questions on the boardroom agenda.’

Barry Johnston is an environmental scientist and consultant.