From an Individual Company’s Environmental Management to Substance Chain Management

Abstract

The increasing complexity of production systems, with corresponding international division of labour, and the growing relevance of responsibility extending over the whole product life cycle, point at limits to an individual company’s efforts in environmental performance. If environmental programmes are analyzed which companies publish in the context of their participation in the Eco Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) or the international environmental management standard ISO 14001, it turns out that for a while already preceding and succeeding stages of a company’s activities are also taken into account. A multitude of targets and measures in environmental programmes already relate to suppliers and customers. With complex product chains, product-related environmental protection depends considerably on the ecological quality of preceding and succeeding stages. But companies will have to include those stages more systematically and more actively than they do today so as to fully exploit the inherent optimization potentials. The situation is best exemplified by a trading company that does not produce itself but purchases all merchandise from suppliers: its assortment policy, its logistics, the disposal of its products after use etc. determine its environmental performance, which it can only improve in cooperation with other companies (suppliers, forwarding agents, disposal institutions …). The respective optimization potentials are not confined to the field of ecology, they also refer to the economic area, and, in the sense of sustainability, have also social implications. But the latter aspects will not be discussed here in more detail.