environmental protection encouragement agency
This case discusses a German consulting company whose services may provide a model of environmental regulation.
The case begins with the story of Dr. Michael Braungart, a chemical engineer whose career began as a founding member of Greenpeace Germany's chemistry division. After working as a protester, Braungart discovered two key ideas that drove him to found a private consulting company that worked primarily with industry: (1) protest activity was not producing a positive change in environmental behavior of industry, and (2) industry was polluting more with their finished products than with unmarketable effluents.
Braungart set up the EPEA to evaluate all of the chemicals, materials, and processes as consultants to improve product quality for industry. Over time, he and EPEA evolved a strategy, called Life Cycle Development that posed challenges to the scientific procedures adopted by the International Standards Organization and the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Was the EPEA method a more effective strategy than the standards set by the other scientists? Would companies be willing to permit inspections and approvals by this organization that passed judgement using proprietary "positive lists" of "good chemicals?"