Читать книгу Industrial Environmental Management - Tapas K. Das - Страница 49

A simple economic metric, return on investment (ROI) is a quick measure of when an item will pay for itself. The time between the initiation of an investment and the achievement of ROI is called the payback period. Pollution control technology, which is not traditionally viewed as an investment that is able to generate a return on investment, is usually measured in terms of lowest available cost to meet regulatory guidelines (see also Chapter 7). If wastes are viewed as materials, however, as in ZD, the whole picture changes. Some have joked about giving all materials produced in a facility a product name and an advertising budget and/discontinuing any “product” that does not sell.

Engineers have historically been compensated based on overall project cost. Incentives need to be shifted to designs that reduce material and energy flows. Compensation based on energy efficiency is being implemented in some projects and it is successful because energy efficiency can be measured in a single unit (joules of energy saved). While material flows are not as easy to quantify in a single unit, waste recovery systems can provide an excellent return on investment, as illustrated in Mini‐Case Study 1.3.