End-of-Pipe Regulatory Approach Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The end-of-pipe regulatory approach focuses primarily on the costs and issues relating to the point of origin of substances that cause environmental problems. The substances emerge from the end of a pipe, linking an industrial process with the external environment. Consequently, the burden of responsibility for any costs arising from this interaction is to be borne by the individual or organization that owns the pipe. Regulations have been created to try to ensure that pipe owners, therefore, meet any costs that accrue. This approach has been effective in minimizing environmental problems, since it has been clear whose responsibility any emission would be, and what penalties would apply in the event of noncompliance with regulations. Nevertheless, a number of dissenting voices have been raised against the approach and, while most of these can be discounted as the special pleading of industrial interests unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, some more cogent arguments have also been raised. It has also been argued that the approach has been too often inflexible and has failed to reduce a great deal of the toxic spillage that continues to occur.

In 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded that the rising number of regulations needed to monitor and control all of the possible forms of substance emission represented an inefficient and expensive approach to the problem. Further, the approach fails appropriately to take account of the various upstream economic or industrial activities that may have more influential impacts on the natural environment than those taking place at the dripping of the pipe-end. Regulating upstream activities may be undertaken as a separate stage of activity in which the responsible party may be monitored and, if necessary, penalized or else causing a single organization to be considered responsible for the whole process from production to delivery of industrial products and all stages along the way. The EPA has accepted the need for a more sophisticated approach to environmental pollution and the reduction or simplification of the existing regulatory regime to face current and future challenges.

The end-of-the-pipe approach also assumes that what happens at the end of the pipe is somehow inevitable and necessary. On the contrary, some environmentalists argue that the impact of the results of end-of-pipe activity depend upon such factors as the structure and extent of demand, which may itself be subject to well-judged intervention. For example, driving an automobile results in the burning of hydrocarbon fuels that have a detrimental effect on the environment. Therefore, in many countries, motorists are taxed on fuel purchases. Much of the contemporary understanding of how the negative impact of this activity should be managed is based on this approach. However, it is possible that alternative energy sources or changes in lifestyle and urban planning might significantly reduce the need for burning so much hydrocarbon fuel. Fixation on an end-of-pipe approach, therefore, can blind innovators to problems throughout the line when resolving environmental issues.

Bibliography:

Federal Advisory Committee to the S. Environmental Protection Agency, Advancing Environmental Justice through Pollution Prevention (June, 2003);
Al Iannuzzi, Jr., Industry Self-Regulation and Voluntary Environmental Compliance (CRC, 2002);
George Monbiot, “An Ugly Face of Ecology,” The Guardian (May 6th, 2005);
Peter Cleary Yeager, The Limits of Law: The Public Regulation of Private Pollution (Cambridge University Press, 2003).