The Centre for Environment Education is engaged in bringing innovative strategies on environmentally sound decision making to the notice of policy makers and the general public. The current book series helps fulfill this objective by providing access to alternative viewpoints proposed by development theorists and practitioners from diverse field, backed by information and analysis of various policy aspects.

Industrialization has long been accepted as a hallmark of civilization. Industrial end products have undoubtedly added to our material comforts. It is also well known that industrial wastes adversely affect the environment. Negative externalities of industrial activities have been accepted as an undesirable but inevitable offshoot of ‘development’. However, the analyses of options for internalizing such externalities have, of late, assumed the proportion of major public debates. Regulatory and fiscal regimes have evolved to strengthen environmental remediation and other pollution prevention interventions.

Emerging holistic trends emphasize a preventive environmental approach integrating options for use of alternatives while avoiding wastes of materials and energy at every stage, right from extraction of the resource, value addition and consumption of products and disposal of wastes. This is evident particularly in the case of large industries and a few instances in the small and medium scale sector. The opportunity to enable access to information on tools and techniques in preventive environmental management to the small and medium scale firms in developing countries and in India in particular is significant and has to be suitably addressed.