Environmentally clean industries based on IT-enabled services differ from environmentally threatening industries such as manufacturing, natural resources and fishing. Most persons in the services industries do not consider environmental protection to have any relevance to the outsourcing process. This assumption needs re-examination.
IT-Enabled Services
Environmental protection does play a role even in office work involving IT-enabled services.
Real Estate
Offices and factories may be sitting upon environmentally compromised or contaminated real estate. In outsourcing transactions that involve the transfer of any offices or facilities to the service provider, appropriate compliance with environmental protection should be considered.
Safe Working Environment
Laws such as the U.S. federal Occupational Safety and Health Act monitor the environmental quality of workplaces, regardless whether they are offices or factories.
Manufacturing Services
In the outsourcing of manufacturing services, environmental considerations are more acute. In some respects, the hiring of manufacturers in countries with lax environmental laws might be called environmental dumping, and this issue has become a political watchword for unions and politicians concerned with economic losses of “exported” jobs.
In contract manufacturing, particularly in regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals, “good manufacturing practices” generally only cover the internal environment that affects product purity.
The impact of environmental protection considerations in outsourcing should be kept in mind.