Many of Asia’s newly industrializing nations suffer from dangerously high levels of air pollution, poisoned rivers and overflowing garbage dumps due to rapid economic growth and weak enforcement of environmental regulations. Realizing that the command-and-control approach has not been effective in treating these symptoms, governments in countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and India are embracing the pollution prevention/cleaner production (P2) concept in the hope that it will bring relief by getting to the root of the problem. They encourage manufacturing companies to respond to the "carrot" of improved productivity and global competitiveness while they work to strengthen their regulatory "stick." And in the newly industrialized countries such as Taiwan, P2 is being pursued as preferable to their traditional focus on strong enforcement of regulations.

Although the use of P2 in Thailand is not yet very widespread, "the preparatory work has been done and the country is poised on the point of taking off," said Dr. Phaichitr Uathavikul, chairman of the Thailand Environment Institute's Board of Directors, during the opening of Pollution Control '97 and the First Asia Pacific Roundtable on Cleaner Production. Both events were held November 12-14 in Bangkok and drew participants from government, the private sector and academia. The preparatory work includes numerous P2 demonstration projects and factory assessments/audits, which have resulted in impressive economic and environmental gains.

The US-funded Indonesia Cleaner Industrial Production Program's demonstration programs documented a 53 percent reduction in organic waste, 31 percent reduction in metals consumed and a 14 percent reduction in water use and wastewater generated in the electroplating, pulp and paper and flexible packaging sectors. P2 methods used included: improving operating and housekeeping practices, modifying process technology, using less harmful inputs, changing the product, and reusing and recycling process chemicals, water and raw materials. The 14 participating facilities invested a total of $1.7 million and reaped annual savings of $5.4 million. The average payback period was less than a week for the electroplating plants, four and a half months for the pulp and paper plants and about two weeks for the flexible packaging plant (see table).

In India, a study conducted by the National Productivity Council found that a nickel-chrome electroplating facility was losing 55 percent of its nickel and 71 percent of its chromium inputs during various stages of the plating process. P2 techniques demonstrated at the facility included using fume suppressants in the chrome-plating bath, continuous filtration of bath contents to extend bath life, and drain boards between plating and rinse tanks to reduce losses onto the floor. For a Rs. 5000 (about US$130) investment, the firm saved about Rs. 216,000 (about US$5,540) per year.

If P2 can have such dramatic results in improving the bottom line and environmental performance, why isn't it being adopted more widely? According to Kirsten Oldenburg, a policy analyst and former staff of the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment, "We have naively assumed that if we educated firms on the benefits of P2, they would adopt it. This was much too simplistic." To date, P2 has only attracted the "early adopters"- a minority of companies whose management is innovative and has a higher risk threshold. "To attract the majority, many different approaches should be pursued,? said Oldenburg. Barriers to adoption should be analyzed in more depth, and a marketing approach based on commercial marketing practices should be adopted. People do not solely respond to economic factors. Organizational structure, institutional memory, and politics all play a role.

Institutional resistance to change and risk aversion are also important factors. A paper mill in Malaysia that has implemented several small scale P2 measures has resisted installing a finer screen to recover fibers that are currently discharged to the wastewater treatment plant. Although it would generate higher yields and profits, the two-week shut down period needed to realign all the machines is still considered unacceptable to the company's top management.

P2 promoters in Asia and western countries are facing similar frustrations in trying to go beyond demonstration projects to affect change among the majority of companies. Many of the 250 participants at the Asia Pacific roundtable agreed that to accomplish this, a fundamental change in strategy is needed.

Jan Mueller-Vollmer, principal of EnviroNet Management Systems and a speaker at the Asia Pacific roundtable, believes that creating an environmental management system, or environmental program within a company isolates the activities from overall production management even if key operations staff are part of the environmental group. "The very act of isolating a program to the environmental realm guarantees that it is stigmatized as a separate and non-essential part of production...it never fully becomes a part of the management culture of the company and eventually disintegrates," he explained.

Mueller-Vollmer and other speakers at the roundtable stressed the need for companies to create a new management structure that enables them to incorporate productivity improvement and waste reduction into mainstream decision making and measurements of performance. The approach should be production-based and "woven into the highest echelons of the existing management structure," said Mueller-Vollmer. For example, loss of materials through waste and inefficiencies is consistently overlooked by manufacturing facilities because overall materials productivity is no one's responsibility. Loss allowances are built into the system. Only a specific crisis or problem would prompt anyone to investigate a process and search for improvements. Kevin O'Donnell of Minnesota Technology, Inc. suggests that companies measure their materials use and loss, because "What gets measured, gets managed." Companies can achieve breakthrough gains in critical business performance measures and environmental improvement by rethinking what, how, why and when materials are used in operations. Materials can usually make up 30-80 percent of manufacturing costs, often making them more important to profitability than labor costs. Improving materials utilization by one-third can save 10 percent of manufacturing costs, typically with little or no capital investment. However, these reductions in the quantity of pollution do not address the need to reduce or eliminate toxic and hazardous materials. O'Donnell also stressed that to be successful, P2 efforts must be linked to what companies are most interested in: reduced costs, improved quality, flexibility and speed to market. He has found he gets much more interest from companies when he focuses exclusively on productivity improvements and materials use and doesn't even mention the word "environment" or "pollution." This is even more applicable in those Asian countries where enforcement of environmental regulations is weak.

There is an opportunity to develop a different approach to regulations in those Asian countries that don't yet have a well-developed command and control system. The former head of the Thai Pollution Control Department, when asked why the government doesn't crack down on violators, said it wants to work in partnership with industry to come up with useful solutions ? P2 solutions that can also help the country become more competitive in the global marketplace. Considering Thailand's current economic problems, this strategy is much more palatable than collecting heavy fines from polluting companies that are fighting for survival. Although investing in P2 technologies, process changes and equipment often has an up-front cost, it is an investment that eventually pays for itself, unlike pollution control equipment.

Because P2 can improve a company's bottom line and a country's global competitiveness, it has been embraced by Asian ministries of industry, trade and investment. Taiwan has altered its environmental strategy over the past several years and has found that non-confrontational, non-regulatory programs have had positive environmental results that were timely and cost-effective. These programs include facilitating waste exchange between companies and joint industrial waste treatment and recovery systems.

Thailand's 8th National Economic and Social Development Plan outlines a P2/CP strategy that includes: creating a green label system to encourage the production of green products; reforming government policy toward improving the promotion of ISO 9000 and 14000; providing technical assistance, training and incentives for firms; and restructuring utility pricing. The latter? raising prices of natural resources? is often cited but often proves too politically and socially difficult, especially considering the effect it would have on the price of exports.

Several donor agencies, in conjunction with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governments, have set up P2 information centers in Asia to help encourage its adoption. A study by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization found that a strictly environmental information center is not successful in sustaining an industrial clientele. Instead, P2 information should be part of a larger center that also offers value-added services to its clients. These services must be tailored to the needs of the clients and priced high enough to subsidize the information services part of the organization. For example, the services may include consulting on technology transfer, business software training, and access to the Internet with assistance in doing searches.

The United States-Asia Environmental Partnership program is identifying organizations that already supply firms with information, products and services and plans to train them to act as "extension agents" for P2 information. Potential organizations include industry associations, universities and government agencies, particularly industrial development and technology agencies. However, government agencies are usually only effective in marketing P2 to the innovative "early adopters," not the majority of companies.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) face particular barriers to implementing P2. They usually have less access to credit for investments, information on clean technologies and sources of advice for dealing with complex regulations, and are also confronted with a higher level of risk. Many assistance programs therefore focus on helping SMEs overcome some of these constraints. In Thailand, the government is assisting these firms through increased information dissemination and training, tapping NGOs to conduct technical assistance in P2, and providing incentives for P2 investments.

SMEs will probably suffer the most under the current economic downturn in Asia. Especially in Thailand, many people are worried that it will become even more difficult to promote pollution prevention to SMEs. David Thomas, an NPPR veteran responded, "During difficult economic times, you can't afford not to implement P2."