"Pollution prevention plans should be a practical business plan for attacking today's environmental concerns through the reduction or elimination of waste at its source of generation."
Dennis G. Willis, Capsule Environmental Engineering
After the pollution prevention team has been organized and the preliminary assessment has been completed, the pollution prevention team should write the pollution prevention plan. This plan should include all the ideas developed by the team such as the statement of support from management, the pollution prevention team's structure, organizational guidelines, and statement of purpose; the methods for fostering participation by all employees; the company's general goals; the structure of an incentive/reward program; the procedures, criteria and schedule for implementing pollution prevention projects; and the provisions for employee training.
The formal written pollution prevention plan should include the following elements:
During the preliminary assessment phase, the program team will have identified opportunities for pollution prevention and will have worked with the executive group to establish priorities. These will be the starting point for defining short- and long-range objectives.
Objectives are the specific tasks that will be necessary to achieve goals. For example, in order to reach a goal of reducing waste, the objectives might be defined as reducing solvent, paper, and packaging wastes by specific amounts over a stated period of time.
Objectives can be defined at the facility- or the department-level, depending on the size and diversity of your company. A small company could decide to develop a single set of objectives to cover all of its operations. A larger company with many facilities or products might develop an overall corporate plan describing goals and objectives, supplemented by facility- or product-specific goals. In any case, the management at each location must understand and support its objectives if the pollution prevention program is to be successful.
Objectives should be stated in quantitative terms and should have target dates. These two attributes make objectives effective tools for directing effort and measuring progress.
During the development of the pollution prevention program and plan, the team may have encountered a number of factors that could complicate the process. These factors need to be recognized, and the means for overcoming them need to be defined. The team should list economic, technical, regulatory, and institutional obstacles and define procedures for addressing them. Apparent obstacles will be less likely to impede the process if everyone understands that there is a mechanism for addressing them in a later stage.
The final aspect of planning your pollution prevention program is to list the milestones within each of the stages from detailed assessment through implementation and assign realistic target dates. The execution of these stages (described in the following chapters) should follow this schedule closely. Significant deviations may cause the program to falter because certain steps are not completed. Adherence to the schedule will also help control the startup or implementation costs of the program.
The pollution prevention program plan should be presented and agreed to by management so that they understand how the pollution prevention team will proceed and what resources/support will be required from them. The plan should be modified on an annual basis as pollution prevention experience is gained and goals are reached. A company should strive to continually improve the entire program.
After the facility has completed each of the later steps in the pollution prevention program, results and a written summary of each step should be added to the pollution prevention plan. Writing summaries and adding them to the pollution prevention plan will provide a record of all pollution prevention activities in the program. The compilation of reports will be a good reference for anyone who is interested in reviewing your facility's entire pollution prevention program, including implementation, measuring progress, and maintaining the program.