I've been evangelizing a specific framework for the current environmental paradigm in the United States. I call it the environmental solution pyramid. At the bottom of this pyramid is compliance and the demands imposed by government regulators. There are tens of thousands of pages of environmental regulations alone. Maintaining the base of the pyramid is daunting but mandated if you want to run your business. The next layer is "beyond compliance". This is where well-intentioned companies go beyond managing command and control regulations and they invest in management systems and voluntary programs. Examples of these programs include ISO 14001, Responsible Care, voluntary site remediation, etc. The purpose of going "beyond compliance" is to create goodwill with regulators and the general public, and to internalize best environmental management practices into the business processes and the organizational culture of the company. The top of the pyramid is sustainability, which is also referred to as Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development as defined by the Brundtland Commission in 1987 is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." At a practical level and from an environmental perspective, the focus of sustainable development is how to provide goods and services in ways that minimize their impact on the environment. Employing methods of production and distribution that reduce energy consumption, emit less air and water pollution, prevent or reuse waste products, and minimize the exploitation of natural resources. Many companies find that there is significant competitive advantage associated with sustainable development because it leads to lower costs of production or higher differentiation of their products or services. The point of using a pyramid is simple - each successive layer is built on the strength and integrity of the layer below it. The problem is in real world application. There seems to be a race to the top of the pyramid. This makes perfect sense in that most if not all the business gain are in the Beyond Compliance and Sustainability layers. The Compliance layer is cost avoidance activity that costs companies millions of dollars in capital expenditures and operating expenses. However, what everyone forgets is that if compliance is out of order all your time and money is spent in a reactive, firefighting mode and you never get to the higher level of the pyramid. Your resources are consumed managing compliance-related information that if not handled on time or properly becomes a liability to the company. This scenario of firefighting is still the norm in too many organizations. Why is this you ask? Because the compliance layer is woefully underinvested in technology. Environmental specialists are managing the risks of billion dollar companies with paper and pencil, disparate spreadsheets and databases. Business managers need to provide environmental specialists the same information tools they give supply chain and finance. A company would be well served with a central inventory of compliance requirements, digital methods of determining compliance and submitting government reports, and ubiquitous broad-band access to the information. Web-based information technology systems are cost effective and relatively cheap to acquire and deploy. Why not make compliance activities easy so our well-educated environmental specialists can spend their time in the upper reaches of the pyramid where we know there is much higher business return! by
Doug Hatler, CHMM
DHatler@enviance.com | 
