Alternative Compliance Model: A Bridge to the Future of Environmental Management

This dialogue explores on of the most consistent recommendations from the various reinvention initiatives that of “alternative compliance: or, more appropriately, given its breadth of application, “alternative path environmental management.” Specifically, this article explores the environmental issue form two perspectives: first, as a company that has volunteered and successfully completed the administration initiantive known as Project XL within the semiconductor fabrication industry. Second, from a broader perspective of the ongoing debate over environmental reinvention and what it could mean for our environmental management systems. Alternative environmental management, and the ongoing experiments and legislation that embody this approach, is one of the most promising reactions to the extreme bureaucracy and burden that has been layered on environmental management systems over the last 25 years. It is the fundamental recognition that we must find a better, more cooperative and efficient system if we are to continue to succeed in managing our precious environment.