Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to study the concept of environmental proactivity and its application to manufacturing industries. The literature on environmental proactivity and its application to different types of industries is reviewed. This paper examines the latest trends in the field and verifies their practical applicability and usefulness for companies. Increasing companies competitiveness is key to their survival; interestingly, environmental proactivity can improve companies productivity, and hence their competitiveness. The concept of environmental proactivity is often viewed with suspicion by manufacturing firms; in this work, a positive view of the concept of environmental proactivity is presented. This paper includes case studies of the application of environmental proactivity to three industrial sectors as well as a quantitative study to verify the results. The papers conclusion is that the adoption of a proactive environmental approach provides benefits to companies in terms of image enhancement, cost savings, and new business opportunities, all of which contribute to the sustainable growth of companies.
