9.6 Outlook
Since the mid 1980s, several forces have encouraged the shift to prevention-oriented strategies, including public concerns with environmental degradation worldwide and climate change threats, increasingly stringent pollution control requirements in Europe, and widely publicized industrial accidents. As a result, firms have faced a
rising tide of public demands for shifts to cleaner technologies and environmentally sound products (Jasch, 2006a).
However, companies have been slow to move away from traditional end-of-pipe strategies toward more prevention-oriented practices. If, as many argue, pollution prevention pays, what accounts for this slow pace of change? If investments in pollution prevention are, in fact, in the interest of the firm, what accounts for the continuing reluctance to move towards a more preventative pollution management mode? And why, in light of the publicized benefits of pollution prevention, do organizations continue to be surprised when prevention-oriented projects produce inancial pay-backs to the organization far beyond those expected of many conventional compliance-driven capital investments?
The following explanations for this apparent contradiction may be reasonable: