University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

� Building social responsibility through increased awareness and collaborative
responses to environmental issues across stakeholders
� Reducing the number, scale and costs of landfills and waste treatment
facilities and their accompanying environmental impacts
� Decreasing or eliminating potentially hazardous components of products
� Promoting cleaner production and products
� Promoting more efficient use of natural resources and materials
� Closing of material loops to promote sustainable development
� Encouraging more efficient and competitive manufacturing, and
� Promoting more integrated environmental management by emphasising the
product’s life cycle.
In addition, businesses can gain longer term market advantage through
environmental leadership, achieve a greater adaptability within the Government
policy/legislative frameworks, together with some direct returns, such as energy and
resource savings, reduced cost of pollution control measures and better product
design (Department of Environment and Conservation, and Waste Management
Board, Australia, 2006). As a specific example, Arch Chemicals (2009) outline the
following as long term benefits of PS:
� Helps to increase productivity: due to evidence of health and safety measures
taken by companies to safeguard workers and their working environments.
� Enhances credibility of products and businesses investment in health, safety
and environmental protection early in the product life cycle to pre-empt far
greater expenditure for remediation or corrective measures.
� Provides competitive advantages: PS anticipates and addresses increasing
demand for safer, more environmentally sound products - demands that
translate into sales. PS also involves strengthening relationships with
customers, thus improving the quality and timeliness of market information.
� Reduction of liabilities: because of its focus on customer education and
involvement, an effective PS initiative should help to reduce future liability
claims. Similarly, the active participation of manufacturers, distributors,
suppliers and employees should help ensure the proper handling of raw
materials and finished products, thus mitigating potential liabilities.
The final section considers the possible introduction of a PS scheme within the UK
precast concrete industry.
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