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Process industries all over the world are diversifying progressively into more capital intensive and
energy intensive areas which are continuously degrading the environmental quality. In order to maintain
the competitiveness in global market, the industries keep on restructuring and/ or reengineering to
ensure desired environmental quality with decreased costs of production, operational safety- cumflexibility
through innovative technology. These goals are intricately linked to waste minimization and
overall environmental performance. Considering the future environmental and energy scenarios.
Ecomark is now recognised as a pre-requisite for sustainable development and eco-friendly
environmental management in industries.
The preventive and reactive approaches do not complement each other in the current practices of
environmental pollution prevention as reflected in legislative, administrative and policy formulations. The
regulatory frameworks have focussed mainly no pollution control through end-of-the-pipe (EOP)
treatment, which allows wasteful use of resources and then consume further resources to solve the
environmental problems in a particular medium. However, the practice in vogue seldom achieves
industrial economy since energy intensive cleaner technologies have emerged as a hall mark of industrial
production. This calls for an integrated Ecomark approach considering continuous assessment of
manufacturing process vis-à-vis state of the art of cleaner technologies of industrial production.
This paper addresses itself to the development of Ecomark program with a systems approach concept
considering the possibilities of energy saving, raw material saving and water budgeting through
consideration of resources of protection of environment as an integrated framework for the practical
implementation.
Keywords: Ecosystem/ Sustainability / Management / Tools / Proactive / Ecomark.