The article I wrote for the front page of the first Mail & Guardian Greening the Future supplement 10 years ago was full of optimism. It was based on feedback I had received from various businesspeople who had grasped the then relatively new idea of corporate environmental management.
In the wake of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in late 2002, "sustainability" and the "triple bottom line" were new buzzwords that had managers rethinking their approach to business. In my article I argued that it made perfect sense to implement the sustainability approach and that South African companies could no longer afford to ignore environmental issues without prejudicing their business interests.
Over the decade since then, I have undertaken dozens of audits of sites and companies, looking at their environmental management systems and comparing their system requirements with the actual performance of the organisation. Some of these organisations have been ISO 14001 certified and some have not.
What have been the results? In all honesty, I must answer that they have been mixed.
Some organisations have established environmental management systems because their customers wanted them to — not because there were benefits, potential improvements and cost savings. Their approach is to bluster their way through an audit, promising all sorts of wonderful plans to fix negative findings. However, after the auditing process and paper promises, they carry on just as before.
Other organisations have truly tried hard to get into the spirit and "do the right things". But trouble often arises because many do half the job of setting up environmental management systems in the first place — for reasons such as "we can't afford to do everything that is wanted, so we'll do bits and pieces and hope everything works out".
A relatively small number of organisations have implemented their environmental management systems, are being honest about them and are trying to improve as they better understand some of the more involved processes and interactions.
An even smaller number are cheating the system. By that I mean they are just going through the motions and doing the bare minimum to maintain the certifications they are required to get. The sad thing is that many of them actually believe the rubbish they pass on as proof of their wonderful efforts.
What is my general opinion of progress in making environmental management a part of business practice? In answering that question, I recall one of my schoolmasters towering over me at the end of the term, waving a fist full of papers and thundering: "Could do better, boy! Could do a lot better!"
Arend Hoogervorst is an independent consulting environmental scientist and environmental management systems auditor. He served on the judging panel of the Greening the Future Awards from 2003 to 2007
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