Organizational Environmental Sensitivity in the Selection and Operation of Wastewater Treatment Units

A Praveen Associate Professor in Civil Engineering Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology Velloor (P.O.) Kottayam - 686 501 E-mail : praveen@rit.ac.in Radhakrishnan R Research Scholar Department of Civil Engineering Karpagam University, Coimbatore 21 Email : rrkengineer@rediffmail.com

Abstract- The technologies and management solutions to ensure efficient water use is an important component of all sustainable development initiatives. In the developing country like India, the effective incorporation of sustainable development activities in the business process of organizations is slowly gaining acceptability. The wastewater treatment technology selection and its operation is one such domain where the organizations need to pay adequate attention to reduce the environmental sensitivity of their operations. Hence, this paper narrates how four organizations from different sectors view the sensitivity of their wastewater treatment operations. The results from this study would give necessary views on the interventions required for promotion of efficient technologies for better acceptability.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Water and its use continues to hold the centre stage of all the sustainable development initiatives across the world. But the unrealistic social and environment targets set in the numerous water policies have led to a sense of skeptism in all the initiatives for sustainable water management. Besides the use of water, the effective and efficient disposal of spent water is another area of concern in the interventions for better water management. The wastewater treatment operations implemented all over the world are mostly technology driven treatment processes capable of generating clean water for ensuring ecological sustainability. Environmental sensitivity is used to represent the impact or degree of response caused on the ecosystem due to various activities taking place on it. Such a characterization requires comprehensive understanding of dose-response relationship of the activity on the environment. Thus when a region experiences rapid development or expansion it is imperative for the initiator to have a proper perception about the environmental sensitivity of the events planned. In the case of wastewater treatment operations, the uncontrolled disposal of inadequately treated water would be highly sensitivity to the neighborhood population. 1.1. Emergence of environmental sensitivity The environmental sensitivity among organizations is

found to have emerged due to large number of factors. Every organization has evolved its own technique and often the method followed and the purpose for which it is proposed are found contradictory in majority of the reported cases. Among different techniques followed by various organizations, adoption of environment-related management accounting and control procedures is considered as one of the indicators of environmental sensitivity of the organizations [1]. The voluntary disclosure of the environmental performance of the organizations was another method of demonstration of the organizational sensitivity towards environmental management. In a pioneering work, Cambell (2004) have undertaken extensive evaluation of the annual reports of companies from U.K. belonging to five different sectors. The period from 1974 to 2000 during which this study was focussed showed a dramatic increase in the dislclosure towards late 1980s [2]. A similar study undertaken by Patten (2002) consists of the environmental performance and environmental disclosure of 131 U.S. companies during the period 1988-1990 [3]. A better and more rigorous research design to evaluate the disclosures based on the economic and socio-political theories has also been proposed [4]. But the research undertaken have shown that the adoption of aforementioned management practices is not always driven by the high level of environmental sensitivity of the organization. The interventions by environmental lobbying organizations coupled with the inherent structural vulnerability of the selected organizations to the environmental liability or criticism is expected to have led to this rise in disclosure [2]. These studies have observed that the strong need for the social legitimacy have led to the large variations observed in the longitudinal and cross-sectional variability in disclosure volumes. While Clarkson et al (2008) have established a negative correlation between the performance and disclosure for the firms [4]. It is observed that disclosure of non-environmentally sensitive firms is found to have released more toxic compounds than the environmentally sensitive industries. The researchers have developed a content analysis index which is proposed to capture the commitment of the firm to protect the

environment based on its disclosure reports. These analysis too were not able to give a consistent opinion in the final out come as economic disclosure theories and socio-political theories gave varying opinions [4]. 1.2 Environmental Sensitivity of wastewater treatment units. The environmental sensitivity of wastewater treatment units can be assessed through the evaluation of the decisions taken by the organizations from the initial stages of planning to the present state of operation. The earlier studies that have addressed the sustainability aspect of wastewater treatment operations is by considering the environmental, economic and societal factors relating to the design and operation of the units [5]. The operational phase of a wastewater treatment unit is found to cause highest impact on the environment than its construction or implementation phase [6]. Hence, the longterm impact of wastewater treatment units can be reduced only when the equipment and machinery chosen are both energy and operationally efficient. Thus the objective of the study is to investigate the degree of the environmental sensitivity in selected organizations towards meeting the goal of the wastewater treatment units. The research would also bring to light how the sensitivity evaluations can be used to assess the pitfalls the organizations make which would culminate in the poor performance of the plants. Thus the management solution for effective decision-making is being proposed to make the environmental management initiatives better in the organizations. II. METHODOLOGY Evaluation of the policies and practices adopted by the organizations along with the quantitative evaluation of performance of the technology used by the respective organization is the broad approach adopted by the authors. Major limitations observed in the assessment programmes undertaken in the past are the absence of a generic tool for the evaluation process, lack of flexibility in the effective implementation of the evaluation methods and the need for inter-disciplinary and participatory based programmes [7]. Also, a coherent approach could be chosen as general guidelines that take into account of identification of organizational views, defining the scenarios and also evaluation of risks and opportunities [8]. Thus four different cases are chosen that have similar exposure conditions in wastewater treatment operations, like access to natural resources, demographic distribution and statutory controls (details given in Table 1). The samples are chosen from the South Indian state of Kerala, which had unique characteristics like high human development index, better access to educational and heath care facilities and people with high awareness level on pollution [9]. The assessment of environmental sensitivity is often undertaken based on the reflective evaluation of the key decisions taken by an organization towards environmental management and validating these decisions appropriately.

The techniques for validation of the decision depend on the type of the intervention made by the organization. In this paper, the key decisions taken by organizations towards selection and implementation of wastewater treatment plants are considered. The motivating factor for the selection of treatment unit, the philosophy in the selection of treatment process, the monitoring process of the treatment operations, documentation and readiness to reveal the status information are the key parameters considered in the evaluation. And hence, the data collection programme, tailored based on these aspects, consists of interviews/discussions with the key decision makers in the organizations and other technical personnel connected with the management of the wastewater unit. Making the exercise highly informal and unstructured eliminated the prejudices and biased opinions in the discussions during the data collection.
TABLE I DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANIZATIONS CHOSEN FOR STUDY. Sample No Sector Type of wastewater generated Sewage generated in the organization, wastewater from canteen and laundry. Sewage from the cottages and kitchen wastewater. Sewage from the cottages and kitchen wastewater. Sewage and wastewater from the canteen. Technology adopted for wastewater treatment Aerobic treatment process combined with the anaerobic process. Aerobic Treatment using Expanded Granular Sludge Blanket Reactor. (EGSBR) Integrated anaerobic aerobic system Aerobic and anaerobic Process followed by disinfection, sand filtration & activated carbon adsorption.

Health care

Hospitality

Hospitality

Education

III. RESULTS The organizational perception towards better environmental management initiatives is discussed here. All the four organizations represented three different sectors where wastewater treatment was inevitable. Two organizations from hospitality sector, one from health care sector and the other from educational sector completed the list. All the organizations have installed full-fledged wastewater treatment unit though not identical in the technology employed. The motivation for their installation too varied across institutions. The hospitality sector has an inherent need for a quality treatment solution while the hospital and educational institutions had court direction to implement the treatment units following strong public agitation. The investment required for installation of the treatment units and their prevailing operational expenditure,

along with the forecast of the operating overheads is given in the figure 1. The nature of wastewater that required treatment in all the organizations considered in the study is the same. The kitchen wash water and sewage formed the bulk in all the cases. In spite of the similarity in the characteristics of wastewater the treatment solution chosen in all the establishments were different. Table 1 gives the list of technology installed and it is obvious from this information that organizational perception of economic and effective treatment process is very poor in majority of cases.

7.0

Investment (in INR)

6.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 2.0 1 .0 0.0 0 2

Sam ple sam ple sam ple sam ple

1 2 3 4

1 0

Year
Fig.2 . The investment and projected operational expenditure towards wastewater treatment unit anticipated by the organizations.

Further, the general perception prevailing across the industry on the wastewater treatment operation being functioning the plant ensures better quality effluent meeting the disposal standards. Thus the poor process monitoring or ignorance on the need for such an activity also made the organizations highly vulnerable to environmental issues. It is also interesting to observe that the organization in hospitality industry, which besides making similar investments for wastewater treatment operations had environmentally focussed business operations. This has helped them to attain significant advantage in the business processes by ensuring an effective monitoring of environmental management initiatives. The engineering unit of this organization had undertaken regular monitoring of data from the wastewater treatment plan. Though a specific method for data management has not been instructed to the organizations, they have taken a very proactive role in keeping the performance record of the wastewater treatment plants. Further, the organization didn't have any apprehension to disclose the data, even though for some of the period the plant has failed to meet the stipulated quality levels. The data collected across one year for different parameters that significantly influence the effluent quality are presented in figure 2 and 3. The availability of data itself reflects the strong environmental focus the organization gives for its business operations and this aspect gave them a clear advantage over its competitors.

1000

10

T DS (m l ) g/ 175 800 pH 8

BOD (mg/ l)
150

C OD (mg/ l)

125

600

100 400 75 4

50

200

25 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Months (f or the year 2010) 0

Months during 2010

Fig 3 : Variation of pH and TDS across an year in a treatment considered for the study (sample no 2) Fig 2 : Variation of BOD and COD across an year in a treatment considered for the study (sample no 2)

IV. DISCUSSIONS The motivation for the selection of wastewater treatment units in the samples selected for the study is widely

The organizations often considered that the environmental performance of various units in it is independent of overall functioning of the establishment.

varying. Each of the organization has an intrinsic reason for the selection of the solution. Both the health care and educational institution considered here had to face stiff agitation from the public due to the malfunctioning of their waste disposal arrangements. The judicial intervention had forced them to implement a better solution within a specified time late and thus they approached a private technical consultant to select an appropriate solution for them. The need for better environmental sensitivity for the organizations located in the thickly populated localities is established in the investigation. But is also equally important to observe that this sensitivity is not reflected in the operational management of these institutions due to weak process monitoring mechanisms and making them vulnerable to further issues. The institutions chosen under the hospitality sector had different experience with the wastewater treatment solutions. The first case is a state run establishment and hence the activities were considered to be more genuine to the customer than the privately operated counterpart. The rigidly held management framework in the state run establishment did not work well for the organization in the environmental management activities. Inspite of a competent and well learnt technical personal that the organization have, the utility of that person was minimal as the decision from the head quarters needed to be followed for the selection and subsequent maintenance. The technology adopted turned out to be inappropriate and had to be discontinued from the operation due to the operational obstacles and heavy power demand causing the severe financial burden to the business operations. On the other hand the other organization in the same sector had strategically positioned itself on an ecotourism framework and hence the environment management was their business philosophy itself. The organization viewed the improvements in their operations by making more energy efficient and environmental friendly was giving more respect to their customers and was in short a value addition to their operations. Also the disclosure on the environmental performance undertaken by them further reinforces the faith the organization gives for ensuirng better environment. Similar observations have been made in the similar studies where a more comprehensive evaluation of various corporate management strategies like environmental disclosure, environmental performance and economic performance it is being found that a good environment performance can only be associated with good economic performance. This steps when augmented with the environmental disclosure of quantifiable environmental parameters relating to the specific pollution indicators also ensured better equity [10]. The state run establishment certainly is highly sensitive to the environment at the operations level as the organization takes maximum care to avoid any environmental harm even though it is not adequately addressed in the administration. The result obtained with the successful model of private hospitality industry discussed earlier have also been adopted elsewhere but is reported that such a strategy is not easily emulated by all the firms [11]. The significant parameters that lead to the

evolution of green business champions need to be undertaken further with more number samples from the similar circumstances. V. CONCLUSIONS The relevance of environmental sensitivity of organizations in their successful business operations was discussed at length. The cases considered here could establish the claims proposed for effective environmental management of their wastewater treatment units. Further, it is justified that the better disclosure have helped to give a public acceptability and thus improved the financial performance of business activities. With environment management gaining much prominence not only from business perspective but also from the social compulsions, the organization in the same sector having identical competitive edge are able to perform better by demonstrating their environmental sensitivity through improved environmental disclosure initiatives. REFERENCES
[1] Frost, G. R. and Wilmshurst, T.D. 2000, " The Adoption of Environmentrelated management accounting: an analysis of corporate environmental sensitivity", Accounting Forum Vol. 24, pp. 344365 [2] Campbell, D.2004, "A longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of environmental disclosure in UK companiesa research note", The British Accounting Review, Vol. 36, pp. 107-117, [3] Patten, D.M. (2002) The relation between environmental performance and environmental disclosure: a research note, Accounting, Organizations and Society Volume 27, Issue 8, Pages 763-773 [4] Clarkson, P.M. , Li, Y, Richardson, G.D., Vasvari, F.P., (2008) Revisiting the relation between environmental performance and environmental disclosure: An empirical analysis, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Volume 33, Issues 4-5, Pages 303-327 . [5] Muga, H. E. and Mihelcic, J R, 2008. Sustainability of waste- water treatment technologies, Journal of Environmental Management, 88 (3) , 437447 [6] Emmerson , R.H.C ; Morse, G.K., Lester J.N., 1995. The lifecycle analysis of small scale sewage treatment plants, Journal of Chartered Institution of Water and Environment Management, 9(3), 317 - 325. [7] Roberts, P, 2006. Evaluating regional sustainable development: approaches, methods and the politics of analysis, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 49 (4) 515-532. [8] de Vries, B.J.M. and Petersen, A.C. ,2009. Conceptualizing sustainable development: an assessment methodology connecting values, knowledge, worldviews and scenarios, Ecological Economics , 68 (4) , 10061019. [9] KSPB, 2009. Economic Review, Kerala State Planning Board, [Online] Available at <http://www.keralaplanningboard.org/ html/eco_2009/2009_ch_20.pdf> [Accessed on 19 August 2010] [10] Al-Tuwaijri, S.A., Christensen, T.E., Hughes II, K.E.(2004) The relations among environmental disclosure, environmental performance, and economic performance: a simultaneous equations approach, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Volume 29, Issues 5-6, Pages 447-471 [11] Clarkson, P.M., Li, Y., Richardson, G.D. and Florin P. Vasvari F.P. (2011) Does it really pay to be green? Determinants and consequences of proactive environmental strategies, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Pages 122-144.