Documents Delmas, Magali 3 results

"This article reports the findings of an international survey of nanomaterials firms and laboratories regarding their environmental health and safety (EHS) programs, engineering controls, personal protective equipment (PPE), exposure monitoring, waste disposal, product stewardship, and risk beliefs. While many participants reported not believing that nanomaterials pose special risks, nanospecific EHS programs were still widely reported. Most nanospecific EHS programs appeared to build from general EHS programs but included nanospecific workplace engineering controls and recommendations for clothing, gloves, eye protection, and respirators. Organizations with nanospecific EHS programs also reported providing product (safe use) guidance to consumers. However, workplace monitoring and nanospecific waste disposal were uneven and were only associated with the subset of organizations believing in special risks. A majority of organizations expressed a need for more toxicological information and EHS guidance. Overall, this study suggests that nanomaterials firms and laboratories are already attentive to nanospecific EHS and product stewardship issues. However, improved risk communication is needed to further the implementation of related programs. Organizations that are wholly inattentive to EHS would likely engage in nanospecific EHS upon implementing a staffed, general EHS program."

"Socially responsible investing (SRI) represents an investment process that reflects environmental and social preferences. The financial industry is in a unique position to move corporations towards corporate sustainability. However, there is often little transparency regarding the metrics used to evaluate corporate social and environmental performance and the trade-offs involved in the evaluation. In this paper we discuss the various trade-offs of sustainability screening methodologies. We show that the rating of companies varies significantly according to whether the screening is based on toxic releases and regulatory compliance or on the quality of environmental policy and disclosure. We base our analysis on the evaluation of the performance of 15 firms in the chemical sector. The analysis indicates that firms that have the most advanced reporting and environmental management practices tend also to have higher levels of toxic releases and lower environmental compliance. We provide methodological recommendations to help stakeholders evaluate corporate environmental performance."

"Corporate sustainability has gone mainstream, and many companies have taken meaningful steps to improve their own environmental performance. But while corporate political actions such as lobbying can have a greater impact on environmental quality, they are ignored in most current sustainability metrics. It is time for these metrics to be expanded to critically assess firms based on the sustainability impacts of their public policy positions. To enable such assessments, firms must become as transparent about their corporate political responsibility (CPR) as their corporate social responsibility (CSR). For their part, rating systems must demand such information from firms and include evaluations of corporate political activity in their assessments of corporate environmental responsibility."