Evaluation of environmentally benign production program in the textile-dyeing industry (I): An input-output analysis

Incorporating environmental costs and considerations into corporate decision-making becomes a challenging task nowadays. Decision-making techniques, such as input-output models and multicriteria decision-making tools, have been developed over the past decades, which help to create a system-wide industrial ecology philosophy in many industrial communities. In response to emerging environmental regulations and policies, the impact of environmental costs on a production program should be realized with regard to the level and extent of compliance. This paper, which presents the first part of the study, illustrates the miniaturized level framework of greening accounting for an individual company. The case study applies an input-output analysis model to assess the environmental cost impacts due to the required pollution charges and resources conservation fees faced in a textile-dyeing firm in Taiwan. Based on a production process designed for generating two types of textile products in this factory, the case study demonstrates how the input-output analysis model can be used to support environmental cost allocation among interacting departments in the participating company. On the other hand, such allocation also reflects the contemporary enterprisers' challenges with regard to the 'corporate environmentalism' in response to the varying and evolving environmental management system in a developing country. The findings from this research clearly indicate that the designed input-output model is capable of providing an input-output structure of the textile-dyeing firm to aid in advanced decision analysis. Apart from the concern of environmental cost allocation, enterprises facing the challenge of dealing with the optimal production planning with respect to varying production and environmental requirements may gain comparative advantages via integrating the input-output model with the multi-objective evaluation model to be presented in a companion paper subsequently.