Emerging Partnerships for Sustainability: Involving Workers to Bring about Technological Change

Becoming a sustainable enterprise, among other things, requires the firm to adopt a different approach to both pollution and industrial accidents. Pollution Prevention/Cleaner Production is intervention earlier in the production process than end-of-pipe control of pollution and waste, and takes the form of input substitution, process changes and final product reformulation to prevent the gradual release of toxic substances. Primary accident prevention/Inherently safer production focuses on changing the fundamental technologies of production and manufacturing-rather than improving the structural integrity and safety of existing production components (i.e., secondary prevention)--and is the analogue of pollution prevention/cleaner production to prevent sudden and accidental releases of toxic substances that result in explosions, fires and acute toxic episodes.