GUEST EDITORIAL What price a clean environment?

---

u

GUEST EDITORIAL

What price a clean environment? For an individual company, reducing or cleaning up effluents can only cost money. This is dictated by the laws of chemistry and thermodynamics. In cases that have been cited to support the hypothesis that pollution prevention pays it is useful to examine of the benefits. What pay off financially are good management and new technology; reduced pollution is a by-product. Because pollution abatement yields no cash benefit, it is clear that those profitable changes to industrial practice that result in higher yields and more recycling-and that cause less pollution-should be made in any case by managers seeking to reduce costs or increase profits, irrespective of environmental benefit. In other cases, a substantial part of the benefit arises from reducing effluent charges. Nobody questions that raising effluent charges (called incentive charges) will cause a company to change its pollution control policy to reduce its overall costs. But this is an artificial situation in which the cash flow (the charge) is not a real cost of production but rather a transfer of cash from the company to the controlling government authority. Furthermore, it can be shown that for incentive charges to be effective, their total must far exceed the perceived value of the environmental benefit. ’ b o recent innovations have been cited to support the idea that pollution prevention is economically beneficial. A new system of pesticide delivery uses charged particles to deliver the chemical in the smallest quantity needed to the desired portion of the plant. As a result, a smaller amount of pesticide finds its way to where it might present a hazard to other plants, the soil, or the user. A new chlorine cell has been developed to reduce energy use at a time when electricity costs are rising. This technology uses neither mercury electrodes nor asbestos diaphragms--both are potential pollutants. Although environmental pressure may have played a role in stimulating the development of these less polluting technologies, it was not the driving force. The prospect of lower costs or a more cost-effective product was. ‘ I have two reasons for emphasizing the point that, other things being equal, to operate a process in a cleaner way must cost more money. The first is that spreading the belief that pollution prevention pays may lead to a misuse of resources. The second is more fundamental: If industry spends money to produce less effluent, this expenditure will be reflected in higher product prices. It seems to me that it is important for CQ1393sw8M)9200955so1.5010 0 1986 American Chemical SocieN

industry to make very clear the balance of costs and benefits, so that society can be helped to decide how much it is prepared to pay for how clean an environment at any given time. In the June issue of ES&T, Alvin A. Cook,Jr., argues that pollution control confers economic benefits (“Environmental protection,” p. 553). He says the need for better pollution abatement and control in the United States has spawned an industry with $19 billion in sales and 167,000 new jobs. He makes the point that a pyramid-building program could have done the same thing, but that pollution abatement and control have provided a healthier, safer, and cleaner environment. But Cook ignores the effect of these costs on the industries that use the equipment and presents pyramid building as the only alternative. He fails to ask whether the capital and management skill might not have been devoted to other endeavors of even greater benefit to society-to generate more profit and to create more jobs. Others have argued that there is far more economic benefit in commercial investment than there is in environmental investment. Investments in plants to produce new materials and products create prospects of additional permanent jobs downstream in their processing and use. Alternatively, if instead of abating and controlling pollution or building pyramids we build roads, bridges, or hospitals, society might reap yet more benefit. My purpose is not to deprecate pollution prevention. I am proud of industry’s enormous advances in that direction. But we must not invoke false arguments that will cause resources to be wasted by allocating them where the benefit to society is not the greatest and that will encourage legislators and regulators to make unwise decisions that have unfortunate technological and economic consequences. The dangers are only too a p parent on both sides of the Atlantic.

John Lawrence is director of the Brirham Laboratory, the environmental laboratory

of imperial Chemical Industries PLC. H e h a s o Ph.D. from the Universiry of London. Lawrence is a member o f the Board of the South West Woter Aithoriry in England. Envimn. Sci. Technol.. Vol. 20, No. 10. 1986 955