Energy, Environment and Resources Center

Jack Barkenbus EERC Executive Director

FROM THE DIRECTOR………

Toward a Sustainable Future

As everyone associated with the environmental arena in this country knows, we have an enormous amount of legislation and regulation dictating how commerce is to be conducted consistent with environmental protection. Enhancement of the environment over the past 25 years can be directly attributed to this governmental activism built on widespread public support. At the same time, it is also true that we have barely embarked on the path to sustainable development, and there is virtually no leadership at the national level to nudge us down that path (see the contribution by Gary C. Bryner, “Sorry—Not Our Problem” in Implementing Sustainable Development, William M. Lafferty and James Meadowcroft (eds.), New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000). Absent high-level leadership we’ll need fundamentally new approaches to achieving sustainability.

The Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC) at the University of Tennessee is engaged in finding new ways to support sustainability. Let me just mention those initiatives that deal with the corporate sector. EERC’s Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies (CCPCT) has conducted several technical research evaluations of products that have significant environmental impacts.

More recently, however, CCPCT has been asked to facilitate two sector-wide product stewardship initiatives. Senior Research Associate Catherine Wilt has been instrumental in negotiating an agreement with the Carpet and Rug Institute which commits the carpet industry to achieving a landfill diversion rate of 40 percent by 2012. Currently, 95 percent of the 4.7 million pounds of carpet removed annually ends up in landfills. The 2012 goal is considered a stepping-stone to the ultimate goal of entirely eliminating landfilling of post-consumer carpet.

CCPCT Director Gary Davis (assisted by Catherine Wilt) is facilitating the recently formed National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI). The goal of NEPSI is to identify a sector-wide strategy for preventing the landfilling of discarded electronic products. Unbeknownst to some, televisions and computer monitors currently contain significant quantities of lead and other heavy metals, such as mercury and cadmium.

Widespread disposal in landfills is leading to concerns about groundwater pollution and, ultimately, effects on human health. NEPSI is a multi-stakeholder, voluntary initiative dealing with the problem (unlike the government-led initiative in Europe). Both Wilt’s and Davis’ efforts are being supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

My own research interests involve what I, and others in Europe, have termed civil regulation; that is, civil society’s oversight of corporate performance for the purpose of improving the environment. There are a number of civil regulatory initiatives, including the Forest Stewardship Council, the ISO-14001 Environment Management Systems, and the Global Reporting Initiative.

These programs seek to establish benchmarks for corporate environmental performance and reward those who commit to these benchmarks through a widely publicized certification program. Eventually, such certification may come to be viewed as a necessary component of social legitimacy in a globalized market economy. At the current time, however, their effectiveness is very much open to review and evaluation (see Gary Coglianese and Jennifer Nash (eds.), Regulating from the Inside, Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 2001).

Governments in the United States are quietly experimenting with programs that highlight excellence as well. The EPA has established a National Environmental Performance Track designed to highlight companies whose actions to improve the environment go beyond simple compliance with regulations. Roughly half of the states have similar efforts underway, and I am currently assisting in the formation of Tennessee’s Green Industry program.

All of these programmatic initiatives hold the potential for getting us closer to sustainability. The fact that there is so little high-level governmental leadership may, in fact, bode well for long-term prospects for several reasons. First, the success of these efforts is not contingent on the actions of individuals or political parties. Second, these programs are increasingly rooted in the public’s demand for greater environmental protection. And, third, it is becoming extremely likely that the U.S. response to climate change will be essentially a voluntary one, using many of the tools and processes that have accompanied other voluntary initiatives. Because EERC collaborates with the public and private sectors and specializes in unbiased, analytical research, I believe there is a compelling role for our center in not only facilitating these agreements, but also in their verification and evaluation.

Environmental policy is no longer the province of governmental actions alone, but instead encompasses a panoply of new institutions and technologies that could productively evolve in the 21st century. These are indeed interesting times.