Many firms are not implementing technologies aimed at waste reduction and minimisation, despite their availability. The ESD working group on manufacturing says that 'in many industries, a range of technologies for green products and cleaner production are already available but have not been generally adopted' (p. 98).

Efforts to clean up the environment have tended to concentrate on 'cleaning technologies' rather than 'clean technologies'—that is, on technologies that are added to existing production processes to control and reduce pollution (end-of-pipe technologies and control devices) rather than changes to the production processes themselves.

Generally, technological change is gradual. Radical technological innovation is often opposed because of the social changes that may need to accompany it—for example, changes to the work and skills of employees, to the way production is organised, and to the relationships between a firm and its clients and suppliers. Dutch scholar Johan Schot (1992) argues that radical technological change can only occur if the social context also changes.

The ESD working group on manufacturing says of clean technologies:

The rate of uptake of new cleaner technologies by industry will depend on each firm's assessment of a complex array of long and short-term costs and benefits from this action. The age and residual life of current plant and equipment, and the investment climate, will be critical to new capital expenditure decisions. The prospect of gaining consumer goodwill and a competitive edge from cleaner production, or the prospect of increased costs for pollution and waste disposal, would also be expected to be important determinants... Adverse publicity or its likelihood may act as a powerful incentive to lagging firms to clean up their act. (pp. 62Ð3)

Companies tend not to replace their old technologies until they have run their useful life. Also, companies prefer to keep to a minimum the organisational changes that need to be made; they like to play it safe when it comes to investment in pollution management.

It is easier for a company to add something to the end of the pipe or pay a pollution fee than to change their production processes. However, it is not necessarily the case that production changes will be an additional cost to firms in the long term. But it is true that their outcome is less predictable than end-of-pipe solutions. Governments tend to encourage end-of-pipe solutions by not requiring companies to do more than this.

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References:

Cramer, J. & Zegveld, W. C. L. 1991, 'The future role of technology in environmental management', Futures, vol. 23, no. 5, June, pp. 451Ð68.

Ecologically Sustainable Development Working Groups 1991, Final Report—Manufacturing, AGPS, Canberra.