From pollution control to prevention. Do environmental standards matter?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the influence of certified environmental management systems in the transition from control to pollution prevention. Taking as a reference point the environmental innovation, a number of environmental control and prevention oriented practices are analyzed providing empirical evidence of their implementation over the firms in the Spanish metal industry. Our results show a significant decrease in the implementation of preventive innovations among not certified firms which stresses the importance of the certification when carrying out this kind of environmental innovations.