Environmental problems today have expanded from local and regional ones, to global ones (Banerjee,2001). It is a well-known fact that the global environmental carrying capacity reached its limit.
Natural resources including mineral ores and fossilfuels, agricultural productivity, and the self-purification capacity of the natural environment all have their own limits (WBCSD, 2006). Irrational resource consumption together with irresponsible environmental pollution resulting from the entire product life cycle—raw material acquisition,
manufacturing, use and disposal—are the mainreasons this global environmental carrying capacity is being exceeded (Matos & Hall, 2007). These realities require immediate action by business organizations,governments, and society to achieve a balanced growth that tries to achieve economic and social objectives without scarifying the environment. In this regard, businesses need to place equal footing both on the environment and on their business objectives.
This calls for considering the issues of sustainable development in business operations. Sustainable development is defined as “meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”(WCED, 1987). Therefore, business activities need to be evaluated on the basis of impact of these activities on natural environment. In addition to alleviating negative effect on the environment, integration of
environmental aspects into business operations can generate significant economic benefits to business organizations. There is increasing evidence that environmental improvement is good business (Porter& van der Linde, 1995).