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Environmental Statutes and Environmental Friendliness
Environmental Statutes and Environmental Friendliness
Author
Institution
Introduction
Businesses, in an effort to maximize their profits, often make untruthful statements pertaining to their products. This is especially with regard to the environmental friendliness of their products. In instances where a company engages in greenwashing (endorsing a product on the basis of a misleading claim pertaining to its environmental friendliness), it aims at deceiving the buyer into believing that the product is helpful to the environment, whereas it may be resulting in environmental degradation. From a business perspective, greenwashing runs the risk of propagating consumer cynicism towards business entities that are making genuine efforts to enhance the environment (Holder et al, 2007). As a business executive, it would be imperative that I have a policy against greenwashing. This is because no organization is totally perfect, in which case it is imperative that organizations are transparent about their limitations and strengths with regard to enhancing the environment (Holder et al, 2007).
Part 2
Businesses have an obligation to operate within the parameters of environmental laws. One of the most relevant environmental laws revolves around the disposal of solid wastes, where business entities are required to desist from disposing their solid waste in a manner that results in the contamination of groundwater. This law also guards against the incineration of toxic wastes that would pollute the air (Holder et al, 2007). This legislation was quite fundamental in the company as the production process often gave rise to varied toxic solid wastes. However, this company adhered to this legislation by sorting the solid waste and keeping the same separately. This would then be collected by recycle companies for a fee and disposed or recycled appropriately. While environmental laws may be quite fundamental, they come as a hindrance to business operations. This is especially considering that there is no way that a business can operate with no emissions. Efforts pertaining to environmental protection are often time consuming and may limit the capacity of a business to undertake certain activities (Holder et al, 2007).
References
Holder, J., Lee, M., & Elworthy, S. (2007). Environmental protection, law, and policy: Text and materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Environmental Scan
Environmental Scan
The process of continually acquiring information on events and changes occurring outside the environment of an organization in order to identify and interpret potential trends that can affect the future direction of that organization is what constitutes environmental scanning (Kerin, Hartley, & Rudelius, 2009). These potential environmental trends arise from different sources: economic, social, technological, regulatory and competitive forces. The interplay of these forces determines the policies an organization will formulate and implement in order to achieve its long-term objectives, primarily its marketing objectives. These forces may contribute either in a positive way, acting as opportunities to be seized at, or in a negative way, as threats to be wary of and to protect against. Although these forces are five in number and the list of trends within each are multiple, I will be focusing on one of them: the economic force, and under it consider the impact of the current economy on completing an environmental scan were one to be done today.
The current U.S as well as global economy has been in recession ever since December 2007. The recession, nevertheless, appears to be in its recovery phase. The impact of an economy in recession is multiple-fold. One downside to it is a high rate of unemployment due to layoffs and foreclosures (Pettinger, 2008). This affects marketing in a major way; with unemployment comes scarcity of money and households have to cut down on consumption especially of non-essential goods and services i.e. luxuries. An upside to the recession however is the lowering of inflation, thus allowing consumers to get better value for money, particularly with purchase of items they consider essential to their living such as foodstuffs, thus enabling them to purchase more of such items. Thus an organization that is involved in the marketing of a luxury product will be hard hit and will have to re-strategize its marketing position, perhaps consider entering into a new line, while another organization marketing a product required daily by the population will be able to capitalize on the situation in a more positive manner by increasing production.
With the lowering of inflation comes the lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve Bank and Treasury (Hilsenrath, 2008). This encourages borrowing by producers as well as consumers. For producers this enables them to be able to expand their activities, they may wish to diversify their interests such as investing in new type of product that is more marketable. For consumers low interest rates may mean credit purchases are a more viable option compared to cash purchases especially in an era of pay cuts.
So as to maintain the low inflation rate and counter rising government spending, taxes are increased and this impacts negatively on an organization (Pettinger, 2008). With the tax burden raised on producers and service providers, many will pass on their increased costs to consumers and as the price of goods and services shoot up demand will fall. However as organizations battle to win customers in a bid to increase revenue, this may lead to price wars that may actually end up increasing consumer spending as firms slash prices.
Generally speaking recession leads to lower profitability and lower share prices in the stock market with lower dividend payments (Pettinger, 2008). This often discourages investments in the stock market, and for companies on the stock market this may spell doom as current shareholders may opt to sell out, thus such companies have to brace for a possible downturn in their share prices and even a possible collapse.
Finally, at this time of recession organizations will have to consider exploring new markets, mainly those where recession has not hit so hard, in order to ensure high profits in the future.
References
Kerin, R. A., Hartley, S. W., & Rudelius, W. (2009). Marketing: The core (3rded.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
Hilsenrath, Jon. (2008, September 30) “Fed and Treasury Are Left With Familiar Aresenal” The Wall Street Journal, A3
Pettinger, T. (2008, October 10). “Economic Recession”. Economics Help.
Environmental Racism And Justice
Environmental Racism And Justice
For many centuries, pollution of the river basin Matanza-Riachuelo has been taking place. Fortunately, the National Supreme Court is coming up with new rulings, which will ensure that the Matanza-Riachuelo is clean. The river is highly placed in the environmental law, which exists in Latin America’s history. There is a need to find out if the pollution of the river basin Matanza-Riachuelo is due to environmental racism. Pollution has affected the local population to the point whereby, they have taken the matter to court. The latter has summoned the companies, which have been accused of polluting the river basin (Hoshaw, 2008). In turn, a public hearing has been summoned, as well as a management plan implemented, and this is according to the government. It is estimated that the number of people who are affected by the river basin’s pollution is 3.5 million. These people are described as being low income earners, and are extremely vulnerable. It seems that the court will help solve the impending problem at hand, but without the people’s contribution. The Argentine legal systems are making sure that the issue is urgently solved. It seems that the Argentine people are not happy with the matter of pollution, and this is the reason why they are denouncing it.
During the 19th century, the pollution of the Matanza-Riachuelo began, but unfortunately the matter has become extremely critical, and even dangerous. A catastrophe that will affect people’s health is bound to occur and this is according to the General of the Nation Auditor. Also, the matter cannot be governed, as there are no policies of a public nature, which exist. Three jurisdictions have the mandate of taking care of this matter, thus the reasons why complications have arisen. The population is at risk of suffering greatly, due to the consequences of the Matanza-Riachuelo river basin (Hoshaw, 2008). The environment has not been spared either, as it is degrading fast and its improvement is being hampered. Society will benefit if the river basin is well taken care of. The judges of this court issue, further want to make sure that a healthy environment exists. The government has the responsibility of ensuring that a constitutional mandate exists concerning this matter.
All the companies, which have been implicated in this matter, must provide information concerning the contents in the river and what they have dumped. They should make available their insurance, as well as the treatment used to treat the pollution in accordance to the countries law on the environment. In environmental racism, often decision making opportunities are not offered to communities who are affected by pollution (Hoshaw, 2008). In the case of pollution of the river basin at Matanza-Riachuelo, environmental racism occurred. This is because the local community was not given an opportunity or audience to air their views concerning the matter. There are certain factors, which have been left out, and they need to be addressed. For example, it is not known whether the people affected by the effects of population were compensated. Also, some of the medical conditions, which were caused by pollution, are not known. The information would have contributed greatly to this article (Hoshaw, 2008). In conclusion, the justice system should have made sure that the local community was involved in the matter. This is because they were the ones who were greatly affected by the pollution. Countries should come up with laws, which can effectively deal with pollution matters, to avoid problems that took place in Argentina.
References
Hoshaw, Lindsey. (2008). Troubled water: The Matanza-Riachuelo river basin. The Argentina Independent. Retrieved from HYPERLINK “http://www.argentinaindependent.com/socialissues/environment/troubled-waters-the-matanza-riachuelo-river-basin-/” http://www.argentinaindependent.com/socialissues/environment/troubled-waters-the-matanza-riachuelo-river-basin-/