ABSTRACT
Manufacturing anything entails waste, regardless of product or of the efficiency of the process by which it is made. Waste, in turn, invariably includes pollution of some sort, in other words contamination of the surrounding physical environment. Thus, from at least the beginning of the industrial revolution, manufacturing operations (as well as other functions undertaken by firms such as moving goods and people from one place to another) have been associated with “negative externalities” involving (usually unspecified) costs associated with environmental degradation that were only very rarely recognized by the companies concerned. It was not until well into the second half of the twentieth century that such pollution could routinely be detected by any other means than the human senses of sight and smell. As a result, the problems associated with pollution by industrial companies were for the most part perceived as profoundly local or regional. Political and regulatory action to address them beyond the regional level therefore began only gradually. In other words, it is only relatively recently that broad consensus has emerged of industrial pollution that: involves dangers that cannot be seen or smelled, but rather must be detected by other – often highly technical – means; affects very wide geographic areas, indeed often with global effects; and, has an impact not only on those alive at present, but also future generations (Chick 2015). Pollution control, we have all come to realize, requires concomitant trans- and international action by actors at various levels operating in the public, private, and third sectors.
