REVIEWS
Books
Design for Enuironment: Creating Eco-Efficient
Products and Processes, by Joseph Fiksel, ed.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996,513pp., ISBN
0-07-020972-3,$65.00
The chapters comprising this edited volume pro-
vide a valuable and comprehensive account of
how corporations can integrate environmental
considerations into their operations, both in
theory and in practice. Design for Environ-
ment is defined early on as a systematic con-
sideration of design performance with respect to
environmental, health, and safety objectives
over the full product and process life cycle.
While the book devotes significant attention to
product and process design, equal or perhaps
greater emphasis is placed on the role of corpo-
rate organization and management strategies in
effecting environmental improvement in firms.
Integrating environmental considerations into
the design of products and processes as well as
routine business operations is heralded for help-
ing companies better anticipate environmental
market and regulatory trends and sharpen their
competitive position. Environmentally respon-
sible management is further credited with yield-
ing larger profits associated with more efficient
resource use, and enhancing a firms reputation
as a good corporate citizen. Accordingly, con-
temporary business jargon permeates the book,
and the promotional tone of some of the chap-
ters is thinly veiled.
The first section of the book reviews the as-
cendancy of the environment as a public issue
and the evolving response of government and
industry. The author asserts that the animosity
characteristic of the early relationship between
environmental advocates and executives has
given way to a new attitude of cooperation.
Consensus has developed around the notion
that government should allow corporations
greater flexibility in meeting environmental ob-
jectives, substituting market incentives for gov-
ernment coercion. The emergence of numerous
national and international environmental busi-
ness consortia over the last decade is brought as
evidence of this greater corporate initiative. On
the ground level, this shift in attitude has stimu-
lated companies to develop preemptive business
strategies aimed at avoiding environmental
problems before they occur instead of addressing
them after the fact (at the end of the pipe).
The second section offers details on organiza-
tional innovations and analytic tools for en-
hancing environmental performance in firms.
The section is packed with charts suggesting
various structures for corporate environmental
management, checklists of environmental con-
siderations in product design, and a review of
current methods used for life-cycle analysis. En-
vironment is squarely placed in the context of
contemporary management approaches like to-
tal quality management, or TQM. Considering
superior environmental performance as indis-
pensable to overall product quality gives birth to
the derivative term TQEM, where the E
stands for environment. TQEM emphasizes
quantitative measurement of environmental
variables such as energy use, emissions, and
solid-waste generation, to complement tradi-
tional metrics such as worker productivity and
inventory turnover, for achieving continuous
improvement in business operations. The pros-
pect of government-mandated takeback of prod-
ucts surfaces numerous times in this section, and
elsewhere, as a practical stimulus for companies
to concern themselves with the ultimate fate of
their products.
The third section gives examples of how envi-
ronmental programs at leading corporations have
evolved over the last five to ten years. Typically,
these essays begin by stating the corporations
philosophical commitment to environmental
quality as expressed in the corporate mission
statement. The essays share common emphases
such as designing recyclable products and using
journal of Industrial Ecology 141
I REVIEWS
recycled materials, reducing internal paper waste,
cutting energy use and toxic emissions, develop-
ing environmental performance metrics, per-
forming environmental audits, and scrutinizing
the environmental practices of suppliers. An-
other common theme is anticipating global
environment-driven market forces and advanced
compliance with international environmental
standards, such as the proposed IS0 14000.
About half of the essays in the third section
are written by members of the electronics indus-
try, including industry leaders like AT & T, IBM,
and Hewlett Packard. Other chapters describe
developments in heavier industries, represented
by firms such as Pacific Gas and Electric, Dow
Chemicals, and ARCO. Anne Brinkely and Bar-
bara Hill of IBM detail the recycling ofplastics in
computers. Kenneth Dickerson, vice president at
ARCO, discusses environmentally responsible oil
exploration in remote locations and research on
cleaner burning fuels. Greg Pitts of the Micro-
electronics and Computer Technology Corpora-
tion provides a detailed life-cycle analysis of
computer workstations. Peter Melhus and Claude
Poncelet expound on the virtues of demand-side
management and environmentally responsible
land management at Pacific Gas and Electric.
Sandra Woods of Coors describes how that com-
pany has minimized wastes by finding markets for
by-products such as spent grain from brewing op-
erations. In the final chapter, Deborah Bogner
and Claudia OBrien at the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency relate the agencys attempts
to prevent pollution in the dry cleaning and
printing industries and describe efforts to estab-
lish better systems of accounting, finance, insur-
ance underwriting, and education to improve
environmental performance across sectors.
The final section advocates both structuring
corporate organizations to reflect the strategic
role of environment and anticipating legal and
regulatory changes to remain competitive in the
future global marketplace. Industrial ecology is
portrayed as a holistic approach to solving envi-
ronmental problems, using Amory Lovins light,
energy-efficient supercar and Christopher
Swans integrated transportation system as ex-
amples of the systems thinking needed to re-
duce future environmental burdens. Emerging
I42 journal of Industrial Ecology
networks for connecting suppliers and users of
industrial wastes provide a further example.
This collection of essays succeeds in codify-
ing important developments in the are= of en-
vironmental design and management over the
last decade and in presenting concrete examples
from many large U.S. corporations. Nonethe-
less, the chapters overlap considerably. Many of
the books recommendations may require in-
vestments too great for small and medium-size
companies, thus portending a growing (environ-
mental) advantage for large, vertically inte-
grated enterprises. Finally, throughout the book,
win-win solutions are presented as the norm
when in practice the economics of environmen-
tal compliance and innovation do not always
promise profit. Corporate initiative on environ-
mental matters represents an encouraging devel-
opment of the last decade. I n many cases,
however, in making the choice between green
dollars and a green planet, firms still need to ap-
peal to a social responsibility not reflected in the
rows and columns of a spreadsheet.
Iddo K. Wemick
Program fur the Human Environment
The Rockefeller University
How Many People Can the Earth Support?, by Joel
Cohen. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995,532 pp.,
ISBN 0-393-03862-9 (cloth), $30.00, ISBN 0-
393-3 1495-2 (paper), $14.95.
Who Will Feed China?, by Lester Brown. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1995, 163 pp., ISBN 0-
393-03897-1 (cloth), $19.95, ISBN 0-395-
31409-x (paper), $8.95.
How Much Land Can 10Billion People Sparefor Na-
ture?, by Paul Waggoner. Ames, IA: Council on
Agricultural Science and Technology, 1994, 64
pp. $15.00.
Joel Cohens new book, How Many People Can the
Earth Support?, opens with a poem, transcribed
sometime before 1600 B.C. (and already ancient
even then), lamenting overpopulation and the
displeasure it wrought with the Gods. Cohen fol-