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Pollution Prevention And Sustainability:
Searching for Common Grounds
David S. Liebl
Presented at the Great Lakes Pollution Prevention Roundtable; Minneapolis, Minnesota August 13, 1997.
In 1987, the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainability as "a development model which allows the satisfaction of all the needs of a generation without compromising the possibility for successive generations to satisfy their needs". Five years later, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio De Janeiro created 27 principles of sustainable development known as the "Rio Declaration". Principle 4 states that "In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it.
In the United States, the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 declared "pollution should be prevented or reduced at the source whenever feasible; pollution that cannot be prevented should be recycled in an environmentally safe manner, whenever feasible; pollution that cannot be prevented or recycled should be treated in an environmentally safe manner whenever feasible; and disposal or other release into the environment should be employed only as a last resort and should be conducted in an environmentally safe manner".
At first reading these defining statements of sustainable development and pollution prevention seem to be closely linked. Most of us in the Pollution Prevention community intuitively assume that pollution prevention as we know it supports the goals of sustainable development. As coordinator of the UW-Extension faculty team examining the role of extension education in promoting sustainability, I have had the opportunity over the last two years to think carefully about the relationship between pollution prevention and sustainable development, and I am not at all convinced that pollution prevention and sustainable development have common goals.
Pollution Prevention as practiced in the United States is largely a remedial effort. By that I mean that the goals of pollution prevention are to achieve by more environmentally acceptable means the same reduction in environmental degradation that was originally promised by the "command and control" approach it is meant to supplant. Pollution prevention can bring reductions in cross-media transfer of pollutants from treatment processes and lower the input of hazardous materials to the manufacturing process, all without changing the underlying assumption of the need for production of consumer goods and the accompanying exploitation of global human and natural resources. While manufacturers that practice pollution prevention often do reduce their impact on the environment, this alone does not make their activities sustainable.
"Sustainability" is a new and controversial concept in this country. The recent appearance of "sustainable community" initiatives provide us with an opportunity to better understand how many Americans might view sustainable development. As currently practiced in this country, sustainable development appears to be a strategy for maintaining our high standard of living in the face of external demographic, economic and environmental pressures. Let me illustrate this with examples from two Wisconsin cities that are undergoing efforts to become "sustainable communities".
Green Bay, Wisconsin has been developing measurable benchmarks of sustainability since 1993. In the recently released "Benchmarks 97" by the Bay Area Community Council, community goals have been established for: health, education, families and welfare, economy, environment, culture and recreation, civic participation, crime and safety, diversity and central city issues. For each goal, performance indicators have been established and quantitative comparisons made between Green Bay and state and national averages for the period 1989 - 1995. Green Bay area government and civic groups are using this benchmarking process to identify opportunities to improve their quality of life, and as promotional material for encouraging additional economic development.
Another approach to community sustainability is illustrated in "Sustainable Development: The New American Dream " by Education Racine Inc. This report takes a more qualitative approach by surveying a representative group of residents of Racine, Wisconsin to determine what local and national problems are of concern to community members, as well as their degree of satisfaction with community life. The issues identified in this survey (listed in order of importance) are typical of American society: crime and drugs, disease and health care, wages, education, quality of leadership, budget deficits, teenage pregnancy, environment, racial problems, excess chemical usage, foreign trade, international relations. The report concludes by saying that "The issues that top American's concern for the nation today and tomorrow are similar in Racine, and are directly related to the sustainability of home, communities and the nation as a whole.
To better understand these two approaches to community sustainability in the context of sustainable development I quote Principles 7 & 8 from the Rio Declaration: " States shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth's ecosystem. In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technologies and financial resources they command." (and) "To achieve sustainable development and a higher quality of life for all people, States should reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and promote appropriate demographic policies."
While it would be unfair to say that the Green Bay and Racine approaches ignore international issues entirely, they are both remarkable for passing over the disparities in quality of life between their communities and other communities around the world. Nor do they contemplate making the fundamental changes in consumer practices that could lead to a more equitable distribution of world resources. In fact, the implied definition in both these reports of "community" as an isolated social and economic entity that must be protected from internal decay and external threat cannot help but call to mind the metaphor of "raising the lifeboat ladder after having climbed aboard".
If we accept that these examples are typical of the prevailing context for community sustainability in America, what role is there for pollution prevention to play in sustainable development? We are all quite aware of the limited impact of pollution prevention beyond the basic function of encouraging source reduction of hazardous waste and toxic emissions. While it remains a useful tool for improving the economic efficiencies of manufacturing facilities, and for reducing their environmental impact, does not pollution prevention at the same time condone and encourage the continued production of the consumer products that our society demands? After all, who among us has successfully argued that a product should be discontinued or a company closed because it was in conflict with sustainable development? Can anyone point to a reduction in global resource exploitation, or an improvement in parity between the developed and undeveloped countries that can be attributed to pollution prevention in this country?
Before we relegate pollution prevention to the role of serving to improve the environmental performance of the dominant manufacturing paradigm, let us stop and think about what knowledge has been gained and skills developed through the practice of pollution prevention over the last seven years, and how these can be enlisted in the service of sustainable development.
Political Economist Susan George has stated: "that since the fall of the Berlin wall neo-liberal capitalism has no serious rivals, privatization is snowballing and global competition is advancing inexorably". This global adoption of the capitalist free-market economy, along with the expansion of multinational corporations and the distribution of manufacturing capacity around the world, provides ample opportunity to employ pollution prevention. Industrial source reduction techniques that have been developed to meet the environmental standards of developed countries should be adopted by manufacturing facilities throughout the world. Many pollution prevention practitioners are actively involved in promoting environmentally sound manufacturing practices outside the developing countries, where they are most needed. If successful, this "clean technology transfer" effort can help to ensure that global environmental degradation from manufacturing will be minimized to the extent possible, and help to address existing environmental and social justice disparities.
Our experience as pollution prevention practitioners provides us with other valuable tools that can be used in the service of sustainable development. Source reduction thinking (in other words the ability to identify the root cause of an apparent problem) can be applied to a variety of situations. For example, source reduction thinking can be used to steer community sustainability efforts in the direction of global sustainable development. By leading community thinking through the symptoms of unsustainable activities to the fundamental conflicts that support them, a more holistic world view can be encouraged. From that point, specific steps that can be taken by individuals and communities to further sustainable development can be identified and adopted.
Pollution prevention experience can help to support sustainable community efforts in other ways. One of the most difficult tasks in development of sustainable community efforts is identifying long-term progressive local leadership. For these efforts to be successful the "establishment" within the community must be enlisted and take ownership of the process. Pollution prevention practitioners commonly work with manufacturers that recognize the interrelationship between their companies and the community, understand the importance of good environmental performance, and have embraced the analytical methodology of source reduction. These community leaders are well equipped to support broader community efforts to squarely face the issue of sustainable development. Progressive manufacturers are uniquely positioned to help their communities take the step of expanding the context of community sustainability beyond their current social and geographic boundaries.
Pollution prevention practitioners can also become a valuable part of the sustainable community process themselves. Our expertise in environmental data interpretation, and our practical perspective on what can and cannot be done to minimize environmental degradation from manufacturing, can be an important addition to the community dialog. By bringing a balanced view to the inevitable conflict between manufacturing and environmental interests we can help to limit polarization of the issues and maintain a constructive dialog. Any community engaged in an effort to achieve sustainability, no matter what definition is used, would be well advised to include individuals with experience in pollution prevention in their efforts.
If pollution prevention can be tied to sustainable development in these ways, what outcome can we hope for? Principle 1 of the Rio Declaration states: "Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature." While the production of consumer goods through manufacturing is unquestionably part of this vision, by working to encourage a global perspective on sustainable development I hope that we can achieve the goal of living in a society where our patterns of consumption do not lead to degraded lives for other people elsewhere in the world, today or in the future.
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