Roeland Bracke

Competing environmental management standards: how ISO 14001 outnumbered EMAS in Germany, the UK, France, and Sweden

In the middle of the 1990s two international environmental management standards became available for European companies: the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and the International Organization for Standardizations ISO 14001. Companies that wanted to implement a standardized environmental management system were confronted with the choice between their national standard, the European standard, or the international one. In the past decennium, the national standards have been abolished and the number of ISO 14001 certified companies has outnumbered the number of EMAS-registered organizations. The speed at which and the extent to which ISO 14001 has outnumbered EMAS differs, however, between countries in the EU-15. We argue that a country classification based on the degree of statism of the collective agency on the one hand, and the degree of corporatism of societys organization on the other, offers a valuable perspective for analyzing the evolution of the uptake of both standards in a country. We present the cases of Germany, the UK, France, and Sweden, and conclude that in countries characterized by a more societal organization of authority, private alternatives for national regulations like ISO 14001 are welcomed and adopted with enthusiasm. In countries characterized by a rather statist organization, such alternatives are looked upon with more suspicion resulting in delayed uptake. Whereas ISO 14001 is a purely private initiative, voluntary registration to the EMAS regulation creates a link between the company and the authorities. In contrast to corporatist settings, this frightens off business participation in associational countries.

What Distinguishes EMAS Participants? An Exploration of Company Characteristics

Empirical research on the characteristics of environmentally responsive companies has focussed almost exclusively on US and Japanese firms. For Europe, which is commonly considered as the greenest of the three major developed economic markets, similar research is lacking. This paper seeks to fill this gap by empirically investigating the business and financial characteristics, stakeholder pressure and public policies distinguishing companies that have implemented the European Eco-Management and Audit System (EMAS) and those that have not using a unique firm-level dataset of European publicly quoted companies. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First of all, the decision to implement EMAS has not been widely analysed. Secondly, we focus on European firms which allows us to assess if and to what extent European firms behave like their US or Japanese counterparts. We find that the EMAS participation decision is positively influenced by the solvency ratio, the share of non-current liabilities and the average labour cost. Also, two measures of company size are positively associated with EMAS participation: both the absolute company size as well as the relative size of a company compared to its sector average. The profit margin on the other hand exerts a negative influence according to our results. We further show that public policy can heavily influence the EMAS participation decision: companies whose headquarters is located in a member state that actively encourages EMAS have a higher probability of participation.

On the Assesment of Environmental Voluntary Agreements in Europe

The aim of this study is to gain insight on the factors leading to success or failure of environmental voluntary agreements. To do this we relied on a comparative case study covering twelve voluntary agreements from six different European countries. First, a general evaluation framework for assessing the performance of environmental voluntary agreements is presented. This framework takes into account three different evaluation dimensions: application, impact and resource development. Second, we focus on the factors explaining the level of performance. Four external preconditions for success were identified: the general policy style, the readiness to use severe alternative instruments in case of non-compliance with the agreement, the potential of the sector to negotiate and act as one collective actor and the potential for market success triggered of by the implementation of the agreement. Next to these external factors related to the institutional-economic context wherein a negotiated agreement is used, the specification of an agreement is considered to be an internal factor influencing the performance. The comparative case study shows that taken individually each of the factors is not as such a necessary condition for the success of an environmental voluntary agreement. Rather it is the combination of these success factors that is ultimately decisive for the performance of an agreement.

Implementing the Duty of Acceptance in Flemish Waste Policy

In this paper, we focus on the implementation process of environmental voluntary agreements based on a Flemish case study concerning the introduction of the duty of acceptance in Flemish waste policy. At the moment, the duty applies for paper, batteries, vehicles, tyres and electrical and electronic equipment. Producers are obliged to set up free of charge take-back collection systems for the disposal of their products in the post-consumption phase. As such, market failure is corrected by internalising social costs into private ones, respecting the polluter pays principle. For the practical execution of the basic rules laid down in the legal framework, environmental voluntary agreements are concluded with sector associations. The use of environmental voluntary agreements allows producers to fulfil their individual obligations resulting from the duty of acceptance in a collaborative sector-based approach. This entails several operational advantages and allows setting up efficient collection and disposal networks taking into account the specific characteristics of each waste product rather than implementing a uniform system. The paper investigates how the agreements have been negotiated and implemented paying particular attention to the relationship between the underlying environmental legislation and the voluntary character of the agreements. The agreements clearly have a support function aiming to implement existing legislation in the most efficient way. Next to the conclusion, the management of these agreements is discussed. It appears that the policy process entails much more than just fixing overall collection and recycling targets, but should be regarded as an on-going process with evaluations and consultations with all stakeholders. In this regard, the importance of alternative instruments in case of non-compliance to the agreement and back-up policies to create market opportunities for recycled materials is stressed.