Competitive advantage and the environment; building a framework for achieving environmental advantage

The author describes how the pattern of effectively integrating environmental and business management tools has been successfully demonstrated at a major manufacturer located in Silicon Valley, USA. This facility was able to achieve breakthrough performance as a direct result of the firm's ability to effectively identify and quantify the business impacts of hazardous waste streams, the ability to effectively integrate environmental business solutions for this situation across the entire organization, and the ability to effectively harness the collective wisdom of the organization through self directed teams. It was the ability of these self directed task teams to identify, implement, and measure the effectiveness of innovative strategies that helped set a consistent pattern for the achievement of breakthrough performance.