ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some closing thoughts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book subjects the concept of cleaner technology to an independent and perhaps more critical appraisal. Cleaner technology seems to offer a more effective approach to environmental improvement than traditional methods of applying clean-up or end-of-pipe controls to existing dirty industrial processes. The idea of greening of industry implies that firms accept environmental goals as intrinsic to their activities rather than as an externally imposed obligation. The rhetoric of cleaner technology mainly paints a very positive picture of how industrial economies can be more environmentally sustainable. An important aspect of the study was to distinguish between rhetoric and industrial reality, by examining the range of types and sources of cleaner innovation, rather than restricting the scope of enquiry to some pre-defined archetype, or to those projects that were explicitly recognized as cleaner technology.
