Environmental Statutes and Environmental Friendliness

Author

Institution

Introduction

Businesses, in an effort to maximize their profits, often make untruthful statements pertaining to their products. This is especially with regard to the environmental friendliness of their products. In instances where a company engages in greenwashing (endorsing a product on the basis of a misleading claim pertaining to its environmental friendliness), it aims at deceiving the buyer into believing that the product is helpful to the environment, whereas it may be resulting in environmental degradation. From a business perspective, greenwashing runs the risk of propagating consumer cynicism towards business entities that are making genuine efforts to enhance the environment (Holder et al, 2007). As a business executive, it would be imperative that I have a policy against greenwashing. This is because no organization is totally perfect, in which case it is imperative that organizations are transparent about their limitations and strengths with regard to enhancing the environment (Holder et al, 2007).

Part 2

Businesses have an obligation to operate within the parameters of environmental laws. One of the most relevant environmental laws revolves around the disposal of solid wastes, where business entities are required to desist from disposing their solid waste in a manner that results in the contamination of groundwater. This law also guards against the incineration of toxic wastes that would pollute the air (Holder et al, 2007). This legislation was quite fundamental in the company as the production process often gave rise to varied toxic solid wastes. However, this company adhered to this legislation by sorting the solid waste and keeping the same separately. This would then be collected by recycle companies for a fee and disposed or recycled appropriately. While environmental laws may be quite fundamental, they come as a hindrance to business operations. This is especially considering that there is no way that a business can operate with no emissions. Efforts pertaining to environmental protection are often time consuming and may limit the capacity of a business to undertake certain activities (Holder et al, 2007).

References

Holder, J., Lee, M., & Elworthy, S. (2007). Environmental protection, law, and policy: Text and materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.