ABSTRACT
For corporate environmental managers contemplating how to make their manufacturing more environmentally conscious and for government policy-makers developing ways to encourage such behaviour, it is important to have a track record to examine the use and performance of waste minimisation. Such a track record can help practitioners and policy-makers determine which techniques have been tried, how they performed, what implementation problems arose and what opportunities remain to be exploited. While much has been written about waste minimisation, there has been little empirical research about the breadth and depth of such efforts over time. Most accounts of these efforts are anecdotes or case studies of particular manufacturing facilities. Though these are important, they do not enable us to measure waste minimisation across the thousands of facilities relevant for corporate and government environmental policy-making purposes. Consequently, this chapter empirically examines this issue for tens of thousands of industrial facilities so that those interested in seeking or encouraging waste minimisation opportunities can better understand what has been accomplished thus far and how, and what barriers remain.
