Steering Business Toward Sustainability (UNU, 1995, 191 pages): Part three: Implementation: 10. Industrial clusters of the twenty-first century: Cuffing government costs

Steering Business Toward Sustainability (UNU, 1995, 191 pages)

(introduction...)

Executive summary

Preface

Introduction

1. The challenge

2. NGOs as a driving force

Part one: Education

3. Educating the executive and students

4. The learning process within corporations

(introduction...)

Introduction

Dialogues with forward-thinking customers

Adequate information

Benchmarking

Systemic planning

Individual and collective learning

Conclusions

5. Assessing corporate environmental performance

(introduction...)

Introduction

Environmental awards

Assessing environmental performance

Diffusing environmental information

Social monitors: The case of CEP

Monitoring networks

Consumers of environmental information

Impacting business practices

Future improvements

Improving data availability

Improving data dissemination

6. Media, community, and business

Part two: Incentives

7. The role of government

(introduction...)

Development of new and future-capable product

Closed-cycle economy and ecological enterprises

From nuclear to solar industry

Ecological pioneering

8. Ecological tax reform

(introduction...)

Introduction: Tax labor and income less, and tax resource throughput more

Allocation, distribution, and scale

Consumption and value added

Policy implications

Conclusions

References

9. New concepts of fiduciary responsibility

(introduction...)

The prudent man

The question of scale

Asset management and the behavior of business

Social investing

Economically targeted investing

The Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation

Intel, SWOP, and the process of engagement

Corporate culture and sustainability

Part three: Implementation

10. Industrial clusters of the twenty-first century

(introduction...)

Zero defects, zero inventory, zero emissions

Front-end solutions versus end-of-the-pipe solutions

Economies of scale

Will Japan embrace the zero concept?

The new clusters

Recycling of ink and paper

Forestry, perfumes, and preservatives

Sugar, cleansing materials, water softeners and compostable plastics

Beer, salmon, and cattle

More to come

Rethinking industrial policies

Cuffing government costs

Revitalizing the inner cities

The case of China

The role of the United Nations University

Conclusion

11. Living machines

Afterword

1. The next hundred years

Appendix

Cuffing government costs

This "cradle to cradle" concept represents new dynamics in the market. It will change the face of industry. The first one to benefit is the government (industrial policy makers and city authorities) and thus the tax payer. Indeed, if industry over the next two decades adopts zero emissions as a standard, then we will observe one of the biggest cuts in government budgets: i.e., the elimination of the need to invest in expensive infrastructure for handling the solid and other wastes produced by ordinary industries.

Let us face the facts. An industrial park requires today a massive up-front investment from local and national governments. The construction of the industrial sewage system, high-volume and high-pressure fresh water supply, high-voltage electricity, stabilized roads, and the like are multi-million dollar investments made decades in advance. Without these investments, no industry would even consider establishing an operation.

But, consider the following possibility: industry reduces water consumption by a factor of ten, has no need for an industrial sewage system because it reuses all waste water itself, energy efficiency is improved by a factor of five, and manufacturing is decentralized instead of highly centralized so that there is no need for high voltage. This changes the face of the industrial parks' infrastructural outlay and the budget needed to prepare for the investments. It has been estimated by the author that as much as 80% of the typical investment needed to prepare an area as an industrial park can be eliminated.