Breaking the link between quality and the environment: Auditing for sustainability and life cycle assessment

This article outlines the trend in business towards the integration of environmental issues into quality management. It outlines how standards like BS7750 and the EU eco-management and audit scheme are based on a paradigm which stresses environmental management as a continuous cycle of incremental improvement which ignores many of the wider aspects of sustainable development. In an attack on the dominant ideology surrounding environmental management the article stresses the need to change corporate cultures, to move towards new auditing methodologies, to put increasing stress on life-cycle assessment, and to increase (and not deregulate) environmental legislation.