When the first Environmental protection Act was enabled in 1970, organizations were severely concerned about the impact of the acts on their businesses. The economic downturn, increasing competition due to emerging economies, and change in the climatic policies have increased these concerns.
Environmental protection laws increase the production costs, fall in productivity, and as a result, the organization may shift to other locations with less stringent environmental regulation Laws. However environmental protection laws have more benefits in terms of protection of the human beings, ecosystem, and aversion of illness. Thus the advantages to society from the environment protection laws appear to be much greater than the compliance costs.
Effect of Environmental Protection Laws on the Business
After the implementation of the first clean air act, almost half of the plants have to be moved to the neighboring countries where the company can meet the environmental regulation standard of that country. In this process, almost half a million jobs were lost. But these job losses are very small on the macroeconomic sector compared to the total number of jobs lost across the globe. This suggests that environmental protection laws support job mobility in different countries. It is seen that the environmental regulatory laws create many job opportunities due to the clean up of the pollution and other prevention methods.
After EPA enacted the removal of mountaintop mining in 2009, there was a 10% improvement in job openings in the coal industry. According to an analysis of the EPI (Economic Policy Institute), the net job gain after the implementation of MATS (Mercury and Air Toxics Standards) would rise from 117000 to 135000 in the year 2015. The need to comply with the green rules and to avoid the payment of green taxes has encouraged different organizations to invest in innovations for greener technology. As a result, environmental protection laws save billions by minimizing the negative health effects due to pollution.
Healthier employees would contribute to the work and society, thus creating more working hours. For the environment, these types of laws will prevent the extinction of the species and drastic climate change. As a result, there will be few natural calamities that would require billions of dollars to clean up after the disaster.
How Environmental Protection Laws has affected the Business
The Clean Air Act has limited the emission of greenhouse gases. The Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuary Acts have set up prevention on the dumping of wastes into the ocean without a proper permit. Without these laws, organizations will continue to be cost-effective by dumping anything and everything into the seas. The different types of environment protection laws demand the rise of sustainable development to be followed by industries and companies.
Environmental Awareness regulations have improved in the past decades. The regulations resulting due to environmental protection laws would draw both criticism and problems from the business world. But if we see closer, the advantages of these laws on the organizations will outweigh the disadvantages.
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