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Waste management and minimisation
Water and land management
Energy and transport management
Environmental Management Systems
Introduction
The long term goal of environmental management is a movement towards "sustainable development". The two main methods which are used to encourage a movement towards sustainable development are legislation and economic instruments.
Legislation sets a minimum level of performance which everyone is expected to attain. Environmental legislation generally aims to ensure that companies minimise emissions and render harmless those emissions that are unavoidable.
Economic instruments help to ensure that the polluter pays for any damage to the environment. By increasing the cost of producing pollution, the payback of pollution prevention techniques is improved. For example, the landfill tax makes the disposal of wood waste to skip more expensive, thereby encouraging companies to look at minimisation and improving the payback of initiatives such as recycling or wood combustion.
