Hans J.A. Schaap

Deputy Inspector General

Inspectorate for Environmental Protection

P.O. Box 450,

2260 MB Leidschendam, The Netherlands

 

 

SMALL BUSINESS COMPLIANCE, THE ROLE OF LOCAL COMMUNITIES

 

 

 


SUMMARY

 

In the Netherlands the municipalities are responsible for issuing licenses and ensuring compliance with the regulations for the vast majority of firms.  The paper deals with the experience of the last five years in stimulating the municipalities who in general were well behind in the issue of licenses and in their inspection activities.  Enforcement by local communities is given a special boost by three developments which are outlined, the Public Nuisance Act Implementation Plans, the programmed inspection projects concerning chemical waste and the additional funds, which force municipalities to cooperate with one another.  The results of a more systematic inspection and the use of civil law, criminal law and administrative law are described.  The importance of cooperation between authorities and the necessity to interest the police and judiciary in the subject is emphasized.  Attention is paid to environmental auditing and growing awareness in industry.  The waste problem is mentioned as a subject of special concern.  The comments have concentrated primarily on what is being done to force small and medium sized firms to comply with the environmental legislation.

 

 

 

1.    LEGISLATION

 

Many laws concerning the protection of the environment have been enacted in the Netherlands since the late 1960s, to add to the Public Nuisance Act, which was originally passed in 1875.  Initially, each new Act was designed to tackle a separate problem area, such as water pollution, pesticides, air pol­lution, waste and noise pollution.  For several years efforts have been made to integrate the separate Acts into the environmental Protection (General Provisions) Act.  Proposals specifically designed to replace the various licenses required of firms by the separate Acts with a single license are now before Parliament.  For more detailed information on the Dutch legislative system reference should be made to the review article in the International Environmental Reporter of July 1989.1

 

 

2.       LICENSING BY MUNICIPALITIES

 

In the Netherlands the provinces are responsible for issuing licenses to such large industrial units as refineries, power stations and chemical-processing plants which cause serious pollution or pose a major threat to the environment and for ensuring that they comply with the regulations, while central government is responsible, for example, for nuclear power stations and processors for chemical waste, for which specialized expertise is needed.

 

The vast majority of firms, however, are the responsibility of the 650 or so municipalities in the Netherlands, which vary in size from a few thousand to half a million inhabitants.

 

Until a few years ago the Public Nuisance Act required the issue of a separate license, with conditions attached, for virtually-anything that had an effect on the environment (from a fire hydrant booster in a residential building to a cattle farm, a joinery works, an electroplating plant or a chemical laboratory).  Since the Public Nuisance Act was amended, however, simpler activities, like those of bakeries, garages, dry-cleaning establishments, office buildings, LPG filling stations and propane gas depots, have been governed by general re­gulations adopted at central level and directly applicable to such activities.  Consequently, operators need notify only the municipal authority before commencing an activity governed by these regulations.  This amendment to the Act greatly improves the situation not only for operators but also for municipalities since it means that the workload created by the issue of licenses can be reduced somewhat.  This reduction was badly needed, research carried out in 1977 having revealed that in practice municipalities failed to issue firms with appropriate licenses in over two-thirds of all cases, owing partly to a lack of capacity (too few staff), partly to indifference and partly to unwillingness (they wanted to be kind to industry as a source of employment).  If the situation was bad where the issue of licenses was concerned, it can be imagined what the monitoring of compliance was like.  In general, and certainly until the mid­1980s, inspections by the municipalities were almost entirely confined to occasions when serious complaints had been received from the public.  As a result, all manner of insidious forms of pollution, such as soil contamination and abuses involving chemical waste, went undetected.

 

 

3.       THE IMPORTANCE OF ENFORCEMENT

 

In the mid-1980's far more emphasis began to be placed on the importance of enforcement.  Pieter Winsemius, then Minister for the Environment, presented his view of the environment policy in the form of the life cycle of environmental problems he had developed, indicating how, in the first stage, a period of differing opinions on the nature and seriousness of the problem slowly gives way to acceptance of the problem, after which the development of policy is set in motion, culminating in the third stage:  the solution provided by legislation.  This is followed by the fourth stage, the administrative phase, in which prime importance is attached to inspection and enforcement (see Figure 1). He also indicated the place of enforcement in the chain of regulation (see Figure 2), referring to the serious danger of its always becoming the weakest link.  In this context he stressed the importance of constant movement in this chain: where regulation is found to be deficient, experience gained from enforcement must stimulate the adjustment of legislation and the rules governing the issue of licenses.  The whole system is, moreover, kept in constant motion by policy planning, which is periodically adjusted.

 

A number of scandals, which drew attention to the poor enforcement of environmental legislation, helped to prompt several measures taken from the mid-1980s to raise the standard of enforcement and strengthen the role played by the municipalities in this respect.

 

 

4.       HELP WITH THE PROGRAMMING OF MUNICIPAL ENFORCEMENT

 

As we have already said, many municipalities were well behind in the issue of licenses and in their inspection activities.  As a first step towards improving this situation, the Public Nuisance Act Implementation Plans were devised in the early 1980s.  Municipalities were able to obtain money from central government to draw up a plan to tackle environmental problems in their area of jurisdiction.  They could use the money to commission an external consultancy firm or employ people to clarify two aspects in particular: 1. what firms in the municipality were governed by the Public Nuisance Act and which of them should be given priority in the issue of appropriate licenses and systematic inspection, and 2. what organizational arrangements needed to be made to ensure that municipalities achieved an acceptable level in the performance of the tasks assigned to them by the Public Nuisance Act?  The municipalities took considerable advantage of this scheme.  About 90% of them established a Public Nuisance Act Implementation Programme.  For a fair number of municipalities (especially the larger ones) the programme acted as an incentive to pursue a sound policy on the application and enforcement of the Public Nuisance Act.  But there were also a good many municipalities where the programme was shelved, leaving noting but good intentions.

 

 

5.    MUNICIPALITIES AND TOXIC WASTE

 

A second incentive for the municipalities to take a greater interest in the environmental aspects of firms in their area was the stricter application of the Chemical Waste Act.  A national multi-year programme for the stricter enforcement of the legislation on chemical waste (2) was launched in 1984.  The Chemical Waste Act requires firms to surrender chemical waste to a limited number of collectors and processors licensed by the central authorities.  Not only did these licensees have major shortcomings:    it was also found that, instead of keeping their chemical waste separate, many firms were storing it with ordinary industrial waste, discharging it into the sewers and sometimes even allowing it to drain away into the soil.  While the central authorities are responsible for monitoring collecting and processing firms, a task they have been performing far more systematically since 1984, the municipalities seemed the obvious choice for the task of monito­ring compliance with the Chemical Waste Act by the more than 150.000 firms in the Netherlands that generate chemical waste in one form or another.  As outlined above, however monitoring the enforcement of the Act had not progressed very far at this level.  Inspection projects financed by the central authorities were set up to encourage the municipalities both to make checks on f firms in general to ensure compliance with environmental legislation and to supervise the enforcement of the Chemical Waste Act.  In particular, municipalities were encouraged to cooperate in their inspection activities and to adopt a sectoral approach by checking, say, all the car respraying shops, all the electroplating firms or all the shipyards in a given area.  The advantage of this approach is that municipal officials can be taught inspection techniques together and attend joint courses on the enforcement of criminal law, report-writing, social skills, etc.  The multi-year programme was therefore accompanied by an extensive training programme and the development of instruction manuals for the inspectors and of information material to be left with firms at the time of the first inspection.  The information material was., moreover, geared specifically to each sector in which checks are made.  That this exercise was no luxury is evident from the fact that the first round of inspections showed some 80% of the firms in any sector to be unaware of their obligations under the Chemical Waste Act.

 

 

6.       THE POLICE AND THE PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS DEPARTMENT

 

The multi-year programme was also used to encourage the police and the Public Prosecutions Department to take a greater interest in the enforcement of environmental legislation.  A conscious decision was taken in the Netherlands not to set up a separate environmental police force, because we were convinced from the outset that the police, being on patrol 24 hours a day and well versed in criminal law and having considerable potential throughout the country, can play an extremely important role in the enforcement of environmental legislation.  They must, of course, be appropriately trained and given suitable sampling equipment, for example, and have the technical support of environmental specialists.  The aim in this connection is close cooperation between the police and the municipal or intermunicipal environmental service.  This cooperation is steadily taking shape and will be further intensified as a result of the recent reorganization of the Netherlands police force, which entails the merging of the national and municipal police forces and the formation of police regions (districts) with expertise in special fields, including environmental crime.  The Department of the Environment has given the police a great deal of support in the form of training courses, sampling equipment and subsidies for inspection projects.

 

 

 

The careful approach to the programme for stricter enforcement of the legislation, the improvement in the quality of the official reports drawn up by environmental officials and the police and the close cooperation on a number of major environmental cases have led to a substantial increase in interest and willingness to take out prosecutions in recent years.  This was one of the factors that prompted the current reorganization of the Public Prosecutions Department and the appointment of far more public prosecutors to deal almost exclusively with environmental crime.

 

 

7.       THE NEED FOR BETTER FINANCING

 

The effectiveness of the multi-year programme for the stricter enforcement of the legislation on chemical waste was evaluated on several occasions while it was being implemented.  To this end, workshops were, for example, held in various parts of the country for municipal, provincial and police administrators and officials, public prosecutors, representatives of water control and purification boards and civil servants so that they might exchange experience, discuss working methods and identify bottlenecks.  The most important problem to emerge from all these meetings, which were held at five places in the country, was the lack of structural financing needed by the municipalities for the satisfactory performance of their environmental tasks, including enforcement.  The temporary contributions towards the cost of implementing inspection projects under the programme for the stricter enforcement of the legislation did not attract the new, permanent staff members who were badly needed.  The municipalities in the Netherlands receive their funds from central government in the form of a general annual remittance and effectively have no significant tax revenues of their own.  A study carried out by a private agency of the financial options available to the municipalities for the proper performance of their environmental tasks showed that their total annual shortfall ran into tens of millions of guilders.  This prompted the Cabinet to take the political decision to allocate to the municipalities additional annual amounts, which will rise to some 50 million guilders (about 25 million dollars) in 1994.  This supplement is not simply added to the municipalities' annual remittance, but earmarked for the development of a better municipal environmental policy in the years to come.  Furthermore, the Department of the Environment has devised a financing arrangement with the Union of Netherlands Munici­palities.  This arrangement encourages intermunicipal cooperation and makes the municipalities directly accountable to the municipal councils and the Inspectorate for Environmental Protection.  To ensure that the municipalities achieve sufficiently high enforcement standards and are able to attract well-trained and experienced people, the smaller municipalities are now required to cooperate if they want to take advantage of the financial arrangement.  This requirement applies to all municipalities with fewer than 70,000 inhabitants.  Municipalities with a larger population are free to use the money they obtain to improve their own administrative machinery, but if they decide to cooperate with other municipalities, the amount is increased by 25%.  The arrangement was introduced this year and ..is already a success.  Many municipalities are opting for cooperation.  The municipalities also have to contribute funds of their own, especially when they have spent little on environmental policy in the past.  When applying for a subsidy, they must show that they will have achieved the required licensing and enforcement standards by 1995.  The money obtainable is far from always sufficient to fund these efforts.  A second requirement to be satisfied by municipalities is the submission of an annual report to the municipal council on the progress being made towards the proper performance of            the environmental tasks.  They must obtain the opinion of             the Regional Inspector for Environmental Protection on               the application for a subsidy and on the draft annual report in each case.  The Inspectorate for Environmental Protection forms part of the Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and the Environment, whose involvement therefore signifies an assessment by central government.

 

 

8.       ENFORCEMENT IN PRACTICE

 

Enforcement is being given a special boost by the three developments outlined here, the Public Nuisance Act Implementation Plans, the programmed inspection projects concerning chemical waste and the additional funds, which force municipalities to cooperate with one another.  An interesting aspect in this context is that each municipality retains administrative responsibility for any corrective action taken against firms.  As, however, a more professional civil service apparatus with better trained people is at the service of each municipality's administrators, enforcement can be better and more efficiently organized.  The administrators responsible for environmental matters in the various municipalities are required to meet periodically to discuss the management of public services and both to establish plans of action and set priorities and to monitor the various activities.  This also results in the administrators concerned influencing each other in a positive sense.  It can even be said that they teach each other, for example, not to be too ready to let environmental interests take second place to economic factors in their own municipal administrations, which small municipalities in particular are rather inclined to do.  Cases of firms simply being left to go on operating without a license or even illegally are consequently becoming less numerous.  The process of significantly raising the municipalities' licensing and inspection standards must be completed in the first half of the 1990S.

 

 

9.       SYSTEMATIC INSPECTION

 

We are now at the stage of building on the experience gained in the past five years in programming and the setting of priorities.  During this period many municipalities have begun to monitor firms more systematically (often for the first time).  As we have already said, the first round of inspections frequently shows compliance with the legislation to be very poor.  The emphasis is then on warnings and information on what the law requires.  A second inspection often produces the opposite picture: over three-quarters of the firms complying with the law in most respects.  A third visit results in sanctions being imposed on those who continue to flout the law.  An official report is drawn up as the first step in the initiation of criminal proceedings, or they are forced to comply by the threat of, periodic penalties.  It often helps if a uniformed police officer accompanies the environmental inspector on his third visit.  Many firms, particularly the smaller ones, then realize that things are getting really serious, make the best of a bad job and change their ways. It is confidently claimed that systematic inspection can persuade more than 90% of all firms in most sectors to comply with the regulations.  The success rate is highest in sectors where firms are generally very careful and professional.  Problems arise, for example, with scrap yards, used oil collectors and processors and small electroplating firms.  In general, it can be said that economically marginal firms pose the most serious problems because they lack the money to install the equipment needed to protect the environment.  In such cases, municipal administrations quite often take an ambivalent view, especially if the firms concerned have been in their area for many years.  The problem is sometimes solved by reorganizing or removing such firms using money earmarked for urban renewal.  Where a municipality has allowed a firm to operate without a license for years, it is also very difficult suddenly to take a tough line because our supreme appeal body in matters of administrative law, the Council of State, opposes such action.  It is also far from easy to initiate criminal proceedings in such situations.

 

 

10.       CIVIL LAW

 

In the Netherlands increasing use is also being made of civil law to counter violations of environmental legislation.  Successful prosecutions have been brought against firms guilty of soil pollution in the past.  Some 120 suits against such firms are currently before the courts.  The fact that the authorities systematically prosecute any offender who does not proceed to clean up the soil of his own volition has a twofold effect.  The number of cases of voluntary soil decontaminations has increased enormously, and Dutch industry as a whole is now working on a plan whereby it will itself systematically identify and clean up all polluted industrial areas.  The threat of a special levy to form the equivalent of the American "superfund" also helped in this respect.  Secondly, the knowledge that infringements of environmental laws may prove very costly has a highly preventive effect: firms are generally becoming more cautious about taking risks with the environment.

 

It has also proved effective in practice to resort to civil law where, for example, toxic waste has been imported illegally.  Summary proceedings are initiated and periodic penalties imposed to force foreign firms to take such waste back.  This type of civil action is also used quite frequently in combination with criminal proceedings, when the object is, for example, to stop the illegal storage of dangerous substances or toxic waste without delay.  There is then no need to await the end of lengthy criminal proceedings to put an end to abuses.

 

 

11.       CRIMINAL LAW

 

Penalties in the Netherlands are not high as a rule.  Fines are comparatively small.  Custodial sentences, which are not easily obtained, are of short duration.  The requirements concerning the onus of proof are, moreover, strict in criminal law.  Few cases involving chemical waste have resulted in custodial sentences.  Fines are imposed mainly for illegal discharges into surface water, spreading manure on land during periods when this practice is prohibited, causing noise nuisance, infringing' safety regulations, etc.  The number of criminal cases is rising steadily.  The more active role played by the public prosecutors is clearly discernible.  Public prosecutors also close cases by coming to an arrangement with the offender whereby the latter buys off the prosecution.  At one time the sums paid were often small.  Now they run to hundreds of thousands of guilders.  When cases are brought before a criminal court, there is a growing tendency for offenders to be not only fined but also required to pay a sum equivalent to the economic advantage they have derived from their illegal conduct, such as the costs saved by not having chemical waste processed by a specialized firm.

 

 

12.       ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

 

Administrative law provides for few penalties to discourage illegal activities.  Administrative fines like those in the USA are unknown to the Dutch administrative system.  It is only in the last few years that the Public Nuisance Act has provided for periodic penalty payments: a municipality may require a firm to pay, say, a thousand guilders for each day it is in breach of the regulations.  This has proved to be an effective weapon, particularly in the case of firms which fail, for example, to install a certain piece of technical equipment to limit emissions.  A Bill seeking to insert a clause to this effect in the other environmental Acts is now before Parliament.  The harshest penalty that may be imposed under administrative law is the partial or complete closure of a firm.  In many cases, however, this is too drastic a measure, especially where relatively minor offences are concerned.  The procedure is, moreover, complicated by all manner of appeal options.  In practice, closure is a penalty that is not used widely, but with some regularity.  It is more common for the regulations with which a firm must comply to be tightened up after complaints from people living nearby or as a result of an inspection.

 

 

13.       COOPERATION AMONG AUTHORITIES

 

In recent years the three levels of administration in the Netherlands, national, provincial and municipal, have increasingly taken to sharing responsibility for the implementation of the environmental policy and, in particular, enforcement.  The abovementioned multi-year programme for the stricter enforcement of the legislation on chemical waste helped in this respect in that central government provided money for inspection programmes.  These programmes were drawn up jointly by the provinces and the municipalities and led to inspections of firms in certain sectors of industry where chemical waste occurs in relatively large quantities.  The Inspectorate for Environmental Protection was also involved in these projects and their preparation.  It arranged training courses, compiled inspection manuals, etc., and the Environmental standby Team also offered the police its assistance in serious and complex forms of environmental crime.  In addition, the National Information Centre for Environmental offences attached to the Central Inspectorate acts as a vade mecum for the local police, for example, when the environmental conduct of certain individuals or firms is in question.

 

Now that more financial resources are available and intermunicipal cooperation has begun, the intention is to transfer as much of the responsibility for the application and enforcement of the environmental legislation as possible to the intermunicipal associations, around 60 of which have been established in the country.  The aldermen responsible for environmental protection, the public prosecutor and representatives of the Inspectorate for Environmental Protection, the water control and purification boards and the police will participate in the administrative consultations at this level, which have been discussed above.  The consultations are chiefly intended as an opportunity to coordinate the various enforcement activities and to establish an annual programme.  Similar consultations already take place in the 12 provinces, and they will now be used principally to introduce some coherence into the activities of the various intermunicipal associations (regions).  The priorities set at national level in discussions between representatives of the three levels of administration will influence programming at provincial and intermunicipal level.  The partnership model outlined here must be taken as the basis for the further development of the enforcement of the environmental legislation in the years to come.

 

 

14.       ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITING

 

A modest start has been made in the Netherlands on the introduction of environmental self-care systems within firms.  Some very large firms have themselves recognized the need for clarity and the coordination of the various measures taken by individual firms to protect the environment.  There is a growing conviction that corporate environmental policy must be integrated into overall corporate policy.  Most medium-sized and smaller firms, however, are still unfamiliar with the phenomenon of environmental self-care.  Pilot projects designed to overcome this ignorance and enable firms to gain the necessary experience are now being implemented.  Clearly, many small firms find it impossible to employ one or more people of their own to ensure compliance with the environmental regulations.  To enable environmental self-care to be introduced at this level, it has been suggested that environmental advisers should be appointed in certain sectors to provide firms with information from their own employers' organization and to help them to set up simple environmental self-care systems.  Another experiment involves regional agencies run bij industry itself, to which firms can turn for an inspection of the environmental aspects of their operations and for advice on any improvements that need to be made.  The results of the first environmental self-care trials have been evaluated, the conclusion being that the time is not yet ripe for legislation to be introduced in this area or for environmental self-care systems to be made compulsory, for example.  The trial period has therefore been extended.

 

 

15.       SUPPORT MEASURES

 

It is generally appreciated that stricter enforcement must be complemented by measures relating to training, equipment, information and research.  Periodic evaluation is also important.  The programme of research on enforcement includes regular studies of the effectiveness of all manner of legal instruments, the number of prosecutions and their outcome, the functioning of the consultative bodies (e.g. those which discuss enforcement at provincial level), the results of the inspection projects, etc.  These studies are urgently needed if lessons are to be learnt from shortcomings.  Direct feedback from practical experience is also very important, especially for policy-makers.  It reveals, for instance, what can and what cannot be enforced.  An example to illustrate this: until recently the masters of inland waterway vessels were able to get rid of their used oil free of charge by handing it to suppliers of new oil or by discharging into facilities in ports or at locks.  Now they have a pollution levy to have it properly processed.  The effect has been the opposite of that intended: more oil than ever is being discharged into the water illegally.  The legislation will therefore have to be amended to cater for this.  The polluter-pays principle is fine, but it does not always work.  Small firms in particular sometimes make it necessary to create facilities to ensure compliance with the law.  The municipalities, for example, have set up collection points for small quantities of chemical waste, where the public can deposit leftover paint, batteries etc. and firms too may leave small quantities of chemical waste.  This system proved rather successful.

 

Effective enforcement stands or falls with the setting of the right priorities for inspections of firms.  As it is impossible to keep a permanent check on every firm, inspections must be made at reasonable intervals, related to the level of environmental risks posed by the various types of firm.  A consultancy firm has drawn up a plan for the Inspectorate for Environmental Protection whereby firms are divided into four categories and inspected at different intervals, ranging from an average of once a year for firms posing the greatest risk to once every five to ten years for firms posing a minor risk.  This inspection system is being introduced in the municipalities and is seen as the standard for meeting the requirement that the goal be an appropriate level of enforcement.  It should be noted that the intervals referred to are average periods.  Some firms will, of course, be inspected by the municipality more frequently than once a year, where, for example, their record of compliance indicates the need.

 

 

16.       OBJECTIVE FOR THE NEAR FUTURE

 

With the system of financing, enforcement instruments and back­up facilities described above the intention is eventually to reach the stage in the latter half of the 1990s where enforcement activities and, above all, penalties can be confined to the small minority of willful offenders (estimated at about 10 to 15%, who are always to be found in any situation.  Well-organized enforcement must be capable of dealing with these offenders, even though there will always be individuals and small firms that go on trying to pollute the environment without being detected.  The vast majority will, it is to be hoped, adhere strictly to the rules.

 

Detection will be important in the future developments which have been outlined here and are considered desirable because a quick reaction to deliberately illegal conduct makes it clear to potential offenders from the outset that environmental offenses do not pay and to habitual offenders that getting rich at the environment's expense is a thing of the past.  Prosecutions have a strong preventive effect, as do regular inspections.  Inspection is also important because regular contact between the authorities and persons under their jurisdiction has a highly educational effect and, at the same time, provides the necessary information on the impact of statutory provisions in practice.  The feedback mechanism is therefore important for the policy.  It is thus clear that enforcement is not the last link in the chain of regulation, just one of many: implementation and policy development are joined by these links.  The policy will become rigid and the rules may be lose sight of reality if lessons are not learnt from the results of inspections.

 

Enforcement is directed at factors which either undertake activities in or outside a plant that act as a source of pollution or market or use certain products that are likely to have adverse effects.  In the sphere of enforcement the source oriented environmental policy can always be applied to those who are responsible for this source.  The facts still emerging on the adverse effects which numerous human activities have on the environment continually make it necessary for new limits to be imposed.  More legislation, unavoidable where an environmental problem is growing, makes enforcement more difficult.  Where it is certain that the government cannot be accused of pulling back where environmental policy is concerned, enforcement is bound to make heavy demands on all levels of administration.

 

 

17.       ENFORCEMENT IN A PLURALISTIC SOCIETY

 

In a pluralistic society where there is a growing trend toward individualization it is more difficult to get across the message that every citizen and every firm has a duty to abide strictly by the provisions of environmental legislation.  A great deal of effort is therefore needed to make it generally understood that, given the wide variety of activities, the rules that have been laid down are unavoidable.  This also means that the message cannot go out from just one or two authorities.  The prevention of pollution must be generally accepted as the concern of every member of society.  This calls, above all else, for the highest possible number of enforcement agents.  In recent years all kinds of steps have been successfully taken to interest the police and judiciary in this subject.  This work must be continued and stepped up.  Only when every policeman, every public prosecutor and every judge is sufficiently familiar with the environmental legislation can both day-to-day inspection and the administration of criminal justice be expected to have a strong preventive effect.  It is also extremely important to motivate supervisors from such special services as water boards, the customs authority and the Factory Inspectorate.  The national, provincial and municipal authorities must also perform their inspection tasks in such a way that they have a highly educational effect.  Building on the experience gained from pilot projects forming part of the multi-year programme for the stricter enforcement of the legislation on chemical waste, administrators in particular must be persuaded of the need to give priority to the enforcement of the rules laid down in the environmental legislation.  They must let it be known that these rules will be enforced as a matter of course by not hesitating when administrative action is required.  In this they must have the support of proper reports on appropriate inspection carried out by the officials in their charge.  Knowledge of what is wrong has a motivating effect provided that it is backed up by sound facts and findings.  Given the seriousness of the environmental problem, a great deal of care will have to be taken in the future to stimulate administrative action at all levels throughout the Netherlands, because tackling problems of a global nature will increasingly require more careful action at local and regional level.

 

 

18.       GROWING AWARENESS IN INDUSTRY

 

Firms and sectors of industry are becoming increasingly aware of the need for some kind of environmental monitoring of the activities of enterprises.  This trend must be encouraged to grow in the future.  Inspection will primarily consist in drawing firms' attention to their own responsibility.  The conviction in some sectors of industry that the distortion of competition caused by contravention of environmental legislation is unacceptable will grow if it is ensured that the inspecting authorities provide satisfactory information on what the law requires and effective action is taken against offenders.  The main aim is to have industry at large accept that circumventing environmental legislation is inconsistent with a professional approach and the code of conduct that well managed firms are expected to obey.  If it is to be achieved, this conviction must prevail throughout the firm, from board level to middle management and the shop floor.  This will be possible only -if environmental studies are integrated into vocational and company training courses and internal environmental protection becomes an integral part of management.

 

 

Education at a wide variety of strategic places in society must teach how to make the whole population of a pluralistic society with an increasing range of human activities understand that prevention of pollution is a matter of life and death.

 

 

19.       THE WASTE PROBLEM

 

The professionalization of industry in this respect means not only monitoring direct emissions into water, soil and air and taking great care over the products manufactured but also giving as much thought as possible to the waste that is produced.  Waste has too long been regarded as an irrelevant quantity in management.  The damage and shame caused, for example, by costly soil decontamination operations and abuses involving chemical waste have made it increasingly clear how much attention this subject requires.  This attention must be focused not only on what happens to waste on a firm's premises but also on what is done with it after it has been removed.  It has been found that all too often waste then ends up in the hands of traders or firms whose overriding objective is not to handle it professionally but to make - sometimes big - profits by not treating or using it as they have led its originator or the authorities to believe.

 

Refraining from discharging waste into water, soil and air invariably exacerbates the problem.  This imposes an additional heavy burden of responsibility on industry and the authorities to ensure that such waste is treated with extreme care.  Reducing the quantities by modifying processes, recycling, etc. must, of course, be one of the first steps, but careful monitoring of unavoidable waste until it reaches its final destination is just as essential.  A great deal still needs to be done in this respect, as recent experience with enforcement operations throughout the Netherlands and in other countries has shown.  Waste processors and transporters must be constantly and more strictly monitored and consistently prosecuted, under both criminal and administrative law, when they commit offences so as to rid the waste disposal industry of firms which do not belong in a professional sector which is aware that it plays a key part in the protection of the environment.

 

Nor is this a task for the Netherlands alone.  International cooperation is badly needed here.  This subject will be considered at length when item 3 is discussed.

 

 

20.       CONCLUDING REMARK

 

To conclude, it can be said that we are only halfway to our goal of raising the enforcement of the environmental legislation to an appropriate level.  The above comments have concentrated primarily on what is being done to force small and medium-sized firms to comply with the legislation, and I have also tried to make it clear that the municipalities have an important role to play in our system and how we are in the process of equipping them for this task.  In addition, the provinces and central government must take efforts to persuade the large firms to adhere strictly to the regulations.  That too is no small task, and different strategies again are being developed for it.

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

1     The Bureau of National Affairs Inc., International Environmental Reporter, July 1989

 

2     For further information see: The Dutch programme for enforcing environmental legislation by Hans J.A. Schaap, Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and the Environment, the Netherlands (1988).