General Comments:

Establish a Chief Environmental Czar (CEC) who has the corporate authority, leadership competency, and the perspective to treat environmental guardianship issues as a paramount point of business strategy. The CEC will establish the EG philosophy, stay on top of the environmental standards, policies and laws together with market demands. The CEC then translates those issues to the troops at all levels in the business.

The International Organization for Standards (ISO) noticed as early as 2005 that Environmental Management issues were becoming as important, internationally, as Quality Management (ISO 9001:2000) had become (see Latest ISO Survey confirms integration of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 with world economy).

Plan up-front, via a Marketing Requirements Document (MRD), to support the environmental guardianship issues with time, resources and funding. This is so important because if a product does not meet the EG laws and demands of the target markets and consumers the following most likely will occur:

• The loss of customers, market share or even a total market
• Legal problems, should a market detect that a law has been violated
• Direct costs of doing a product over again to comply with the dictums
• Loss of reputation

Now that you've gotten a more cohesive understanding of the various EG Caveats and Dictums for environmental and consumer protection, let's take a look at how these will effect a product development effort, the product and the business processes. Note that these EG Dictums and Caveats will have as much, if not more, effect on the business processes as on the technical aspects of the product.