Implementation of environmental management in the Danish printing house industry

Abstract

In the Danish printing house industry the trade organization has launched a programme to promote environmental management systems. Before the programme was launched a survey was made in order to expose the different incentives and barriers as well as elucidating the experiences of enterprises already certified according to the standard (BS 7750/ISO 14000). Twelve of the most environmentally positive companies within the trade participated in the investigation. The results indicate that the enterprises in several ways benefit from the environmental management system. Besides economic gains, improvements of the working conditions were mentioned by many enterprises as a major advantage. Many enterprises also underlined that they have learnt much from the ‘systematic’ way of thinking of the management systems. The implementation of an environmental management system was a major task for many of the enterprises. Most of the firms underlined that although it was a laborious task, it was essential that they did the hard work themselves. That is the only way to learn how to manage the environment and become really committed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.