Historical Development of Environmental Management Tools and Techniques: A Review Paper on Its Driving Forces

Industrial development since the past period has caused serious impacts on the natural environments. This paper, therefore, explores and discusses the various pollution control techniques employed by firms. The paper therefore, has a theoretical and analytical part. The theoretical section provides background concepts on environmental management tools. The analytical part contains case studies that denote the prospect and consequences of the approach. The various approach employed to manage industrial impacts on environments were usually grouped into passive, reactive, and proactive strategies. The initial approach had less care for environments in which industries made a profit at the cost of environments. The reactive approach is defensive and practiced to handle waste after it is generated, which is an end-of-pipe approach and waste recycling technology. Firms used them to fulfill compliance and environmental regulation criteria. Recently, cleaner production, which is a proactive approach is emerged due to the existence of pressures from regulatory bodies, stakeholders, cost factors, and competitive advantages. It helps to reduce wastes at the source by minimizing the volume of by-products and the amount of energy and raw materials used. From the existed approaches, cleaner technology is more advantageous than others for environmental and economic reasons.