ABSTRACT
This
research work focused on the application of environmental management systems in
a soap production plant. An environmental management systems (EMS) is a tool
used to implement a structure programme of continual improvement in
environmental management system. It is a tool for
managing the impacts of organization’s activities in the soap production
industry. It provides a structural approach and implementing environmental
protection measures. EMS is also systematic approach for incorporating energy
and environmental goals and priorities (such as energy use and regulatory
compliance) into routine operations. This research established that the
main causes of environmental management systems in soap production plants
include climate change, water availability, pollution, waste generation and
disposal are among the leading challenges in this regard. Based on the
constraints and causes, the following conclusions were draw, overall demand for
soaps and detergents depends on multiple factors and results in wide swings in
production volume, making capacity planning difficult, consumer demand is
influenced by population growth, particularly of households with children;
commercial demand is driven by the health of the hotel, restaurant and hospital
industries. Recommendations were drawn
based on the causes and conclusions, implement reasonable actions for
prevention of pollution of air, water, soil and minimize the impact of any pollution
which is accidental or unavoidable, use energy as efficiently as possible
during the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity and the
operation of its facilities, and promote efficient use of electricity by
stakeholders, maintain an adequate level of emergency preparedness in order to
respond quickly and effectively to environmental emergencies, recover, reduce,
identification of significant environment impacts-a company should undertake an
analysis of its activities in order to define the areas where it has most
impact, for example energy consumption, emissions to air, water pollution,
waste, water consumption, draft an environmental policy stating the company’s
intentions and its commitment to compliance with legal and other applicable
requirements, and its commitment to continual improvement of its environmental
performance through pollution prevention and reuse and recycle waste materials
whenever feasible in Nigeria.
TABL E OF CONTENTS
Pages
Title
page i
Certification
ii
Letter
of Transmittal iii
Dedication
iv
Acknowledgment v
Abstract vi
Table
of Contents vii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.0 Introduction 1
1.1 Background to the Study 1
1.2 Importance of the Study 7
1.3 Statement of the Problem
9
1.4 Aims and Objectives of the Study 12
1.5 Scope of Study 13
CHAPTER TWO:
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Introduction 14
2.1
Definition of Soap 18
2.2
Properties of Soap
19
2.3 Soap Production
Process 20
2.4 Solid Soap Production using Plantain
Peel Ash as Source of Alkali 24
2.5 Detergent Action of Soap 27
2.6
Production of Transparent Soap
35
2.7 Soap Perfumes 39
CHAPTER THREE: PRINCIPLES OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM
3.0 Introduction 42
3.1 Producer responsibility 43
3.2 User pays principle 46
3.3 Prevention of Pollution 48
3.4 Comply with Legislation 48
3.5 Improve continually
49
CHAPTER FOUR: APPLICATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM TO
SOAP PRODUCTION
4.1
Introduction 50
4.2 Commercial and Economic Interests of EMS 53
4.3 Challenges associated with EMS in Soap Production 55
4.4 Liquid and Solid Wastes 55
4.5 Impact of Industrial Environmental Problems 57
4.6 Approaches to industrial Environmental Management 57
4.7 Environmental Implications
58
CHAPTER FIVE:
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION
5.1 Conclusions 60
5.2 Recommendation of
Environmental Management Systems in the Soap 63 Production Plant
References 66
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0
INTRODUCTION
The domestic and industrial soap throughout
the world is improving very fast with diversifying through great innovation and
quality with each day in its business into variety of products and services.
Soap products like soap noodles, detergents, dish-wash bars, bath soaps, liquid
soap, body shower, gel etc. have become an integral part of an individual’s day
to day life. These products in their product line are the unique feature of
selling throughout the globe value chain which comes up from various source of
processing. Soap comes to the market after different set of processes such as
mixer, duplex, steel frames for cutting cakes, pans for cooling for paste,
bubbling cattle and packaging. The chain involves forward integration with
transportation to supply the finished products to the retailers and finally to
the customers. The finished product reaches the ultimate customer through a
variety of production steps and industry involvements, along with supply value
chain networking. The major importance of getting the know-how of the soap manufacturing
value chain is to highlight the issues faced by the soap firms. In achieving
idea level of quality which equally competes with the multi-nationals products
and become aware of the constraints from the grass root level of raw materials
purchasing to transforming it into highly quality finished products for the
customers.
1.1 Background to the Study
Environmental Management
System (EMS) is a concept based on continuous improvement in all aspects of a
firm’s environmental performance. According to Khanna and Anton (2002) EMS
“represent an organizational change within firms and a self-motivated effort at
internalizing environmental externalities by adopting management practices that
integrate environment and production decisions, which identify opportunities
for pollution reduction and enable the firm to make continuous improvements in
production methods and environmental performance”. Standards for environmental management
systems have been developed and evolving for several years (Brorson and Larsson,
1999). The British Standards Institution (BSI) introduced the first standard
for environmental management in 1992 (BS 7750). The International Organization
for Standardization (ISO) introduced the ISO 14000 series in September 1996 and
it specifies the requirements for an EMS (Clements, 1996, Brorson and Larsson,
1999). Clement (1996) notes that the standard applies to “those environmental
aspects over which the firm either has control or could be expected to have an
influence on”. Aboulnaga (1998) pointed out that, the adoption and use of an
EMS can be a source of competitive advantage to soap industries and
organizations wishing to compete on the international stage. Roy and Vezina
(2001) also show that environmental initiatives can be used to enhance a soap
production’s innovative capability. Sheldon (1997) also shows that ISO 14001
has been heartily welcomed by people in government, business and academia. It
is believed globally that the standard is useful and one that augurs well for
the future of environmental management (Moxen and Strachan, 2000). Other
proponents of ISO 14001 like Stapleton et al., (2001) argued that the standard
could act as a framework for significantly improving organizational
performance.
Soap is integral to our
society today, and we find it hard to imagine a time when people were kept
sweet-smelling by the action of perfume rather than soap. However, the current widespread use of soap
is only a very recent occurrence, despite the fact that it has been made for
more than 2500 years. The first recorded
manufacture of soap was in 600BC, when Pliny the Elder described its
manufacture by the Phonecians from goats tallow and ash, and it was known among
the British Celts and throughout the Roman Empire. However, these people used their soap
medicinally, and it was not until the second century AD that it was used for
cleaning, and not until the nineteenth century that it began to be commonly
used in the Western world.
Early this century the first
synthetic detergents were manufactured, and these have now taken the place of
soap for many applications.
Soaps are widely used in our
society. Soaps are the product of the
reaction between a fat and sodium hydroxide:
RCOOR’ +
NaOH R’OH +
RCOO-Na+.
Soap is produced industrially
in four basic steps. This study lists
different steps because in the industrial processes described each of these is
done over several process steps, but in principle it could be done in the three
steps which are saponification, glycerine removal, soap purification and
finishing.
All soaps contain a surfactant
as their active ingredient. This is an
ionic species consisting of a long, linear, non-polar ’tail’ with a cationic or
anionic ‘head’ and a counter ion. The
tail is water insoluble and the head is water soluble - a difference in
solubility which has two important implications. Firstly, this makes the surfactant molecule a
wetting agent: the tails migrate to align themselves with the solid: water
interface, lowering the surface tension at that point so that it penetrates the
fabric better. Secondly, it allows the
oily dirt particles to form an emulsion with the water: the tails of many
surfactant molecules surround an oily dirt particle, forming a micelle with a
drop of oil in the centre and the ionic heads of the surfactant molecules
pointing outwards and hence keeping the micelle in the polar solution.
The soap industry throughout
the world is improving very fast with diversifying through great innovation and
quality with each passing day in its business into variety of products and
services. Soap products like soap noodles, detergents, dish-wash bars, bath
soaps, liquid soap, body shower gels, etc have become an important part of
every one’s daily life. These products in their product line are the unique
feature of selling throughout the globe. These products are the best source of
supply value chain which comes up from various sources of processing. Soap
comes to the market after different set of processes such as mixer, duplex,
steel frames for cutting cakes, pans for cooling for paste, bubbling cattle and
packaging. The chain involves forward integration with transportation and
packaging industry, to supply the finished products to the retailers and
finally to the customers.
Vertical integration: is a
strategy used by a company to control over its suppliers or distributors in
order to increase the firm’s power in the market place, reduce transaction
costs and secure supplies or distribution channels. Vertical integration has
two dimensions backward and forward. In backward ties the raw material
manufacturing firms are closely connected with their vendors and suppliers.
Manufacturers and customers provide specifications to their subcontractors,
vendors and suppliers. In forward ties, being the part of domestic value chain
soap firms in Faisalabad is connected with distributors, whole sellers and
retailers. Process of order flow and specifications starts from the buyers who
order and specify the product after that manufacturing process is monitored.
Horizontal Integration: is a
process where a corporate company usuallu acquires or merge with a competitor
in a same industry. There are two types of horizontal ties as observed in
Faisalabad, bilateral ties and multilateral ties; the former exist between two
firms dealing in the same product. It is noted that such ties are rare in
Faisalabad mainly because of lack of trust and fierce competition among firms
and the latter exist among more than two firms to achieve mutual goals. There
is strong evidence of multilateral horizontal ties among firms in Faisalabad
soap clusters as its seen at different occasions in past formation of
Faisalabad soap manufacturing association (FSMA) in 1990 by separating its
entity from Pakistan soap manufacturing association (PSMA), facing challenges
of quality by multi nationals, existence of dry port of International
facilities and development of FIA (Faisalabad International Airport) through
FCCI.
There is cut throat
competition among firms in the cluster. Most of the firms are producing low
quality products. The organizational structure of small firms is lack of
facilities and operations are run by either the entrepreneur himself or by a
low level supervisor. Entrepreneurs are not having any management and technical
skills which are one of the reasons of no international linkages of the sector.
Soap Value chain. The stages
of value-added chains are divided into two categories:
• Primary Activities
• Supporting Activities.
Primary activities
include:
·
Raw-Material accumulation
(local, foreign or both)
·
Manufacturing ( Mixer, Duplex,
Cutting Pans, Bubbling Cattle, etc)
·
Packaging and Quality
inspection
·
Distribution.
Supporting activities include:
·
Equipment and Technology
·
HRD and Administrative
support
·
Firm infrastructure
·
Physical support
The major benefit associated
with the value chain networking is that it continuously improves the
performance and productivity of its members. The soap value chain is a perfect
fit, thereby improving the structure, designs and supply of the soap industry.
These primary and supporting activities add value to the process of
transforming raw-material into finished soap product. Figure 1.1 highlights the
process of soap industry’s value chain.
An Environmental Management
System (EMS) is a systematic approach for incorporating energy and
environmental goals and priorities (such as energy use and regulatory
compliance) into routine operations.
While some sort of de facto system is inherent to any organization that
must meet energy and environmental requirements as part of daily operations, it
is generally accepted as a valuable step to formalize the approach by
documenting it. Not only does
documentation of the system ensure consistency over time and across employees,
there is a growing body of evidence indicating that there is considerable value
in defining a systematic approach to managing energy and environmental goals.
1.2 Importance of the Study
Environmental management
system is a tool for managing the impacts of organization’s activities on the
soap production industry. It provides a structural approach and implementing
environmental protection measures.
Concern for the environment can be traced as far back as the
pre-biblical periods. However, Pickering and Owen (1997) were the first to give
concrete meaning to it at the United Nations Conference on the Human
Environment held at Stockholm, Sweden in June 1972. The next summit was held in
Brazil “Rio Conference” or the “Earth Summit” of 1992. Pickering and Owen
further stressed that, the earth summit offered world leaders the rare
opportunity of building consensus on managing the planet. A major outcome of
the conference was the 27 point principle that was adopted by all the 171
countries. It was this awakening that gingered governments all over the world
including Ghana to take concrete steps towards the protection, management and
enhancement of the environment (EPA, 1994).
The government of Ghana since the Stockholm conference established
agencies to manage its environment. The purpose of environmental management
according to the EPA (2002) is to “identify human activities that may threaten
and affect the quality of the environment, implement mitigation measures at the
appropriate time to manage these effects, ensure that anticipated effects are
maintained within the levels predicted, manage anticipated effects before they
become a problem and, optimize environmental protection”.
EMS monitors
environmental performance, similar to the way a financial management system
monitors expenditure and income and enables regular checks of a company’s
performance. An EMS integrates environmental management into a company’s daily
operations, long term planning and quantity management system.
Soap is designed as a
product to be used once then flushed down the drain, so as expected the
environmental implications of its manufacture are not nearly so great as many
other chemical processes. There are two
main areas of concern: the safe transport and containment of the raw materials,
and the minimisation of losses during manufacture.
EMS are becoming
increasingly important to both national and multinational production companies.
Underlying its emergence and acceptance is the premise that improved systems
associated with EMS can make achievement of strategic goals more likely.
Through the systematic
approach of an EMS, an industry can define and implement the organization’s
environmental policy, ensure compliance with relevant environmental legislation
and regulations, identify and manage its environmental impacts, and achieve
continual improvements in environmental performance. If an enterprise
adequately designs and sizes its EMS for the scale of the business’s activity,
then the EMS’s implementation will allow management to understand and track its
environmental performance, and thereby develop and adopt measures to improve
such performance.
An EMS dictates that an
organization not only understands the regulatory framework in which it
operates, but that the organization incorporates these specific requirements
into the controls developed to manage specific tasks and risks. Adoption of an
EMS can enable organizations to collect data that they did not previously have.
Examples would be water use, energy consumption, and volume of waste generated.
Additionally, these data can assist in responding to regulators as well as to
markets. The challenge occurs, particularly in developing or transitional
countries, when the environmental regulatory framework is still immature or
under development. An important benefit of an EMS is its capacity to help
improve an organization’s performance in developing countries where the
regulatory framework and other drivers may not be as robust.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
According to the EPA,
there are over 5000 manufacturing industries in the country of which half are
classified as medium to large scale. About 60% of these are located in the
Lagos Municipal area (EPA, 2002). These industries have had a large impact on
the economy of the area and the country in general. The concentration of the
industries in such a small area has aggravated the environmental stress caused
by industrial activities. Some of the major problems include industrial liquid
and solid waste, air and water pollution.
Soap manufacturing firms
have to identify various sources of raw-material such as tello, animal skin,
acids, oils, fats, silicate, toxics, caustic soda, etc from various parts of
the world. The local sources of raw-material are widely available but it is not
up to the mark to compete with major brands. There is a good market of local
raw-material as many of the micro, small and medium sized soap firms work with
them with huge volumes.
Input (raw-material) from
different markets are supplied to the manufacturing units of soap firms for
processing. The raw- material is treated with chemicals and equipment usually
locally manufactured which process the raw-material and transform them into
semi-finished soap which is then used by processing units. Soap production
firms face major constraints of technical and financial problems. Lack of
technical competence, financial sources, unskilled worker, etc are the major
reason of restricting the process of finished goods as per the demand and
market requirement. At this point, multi-national firms score with producing
quality and standard soap product line in the market which helps them to
extract lion’s share of profit from the market. In local manufacturer’s case,
the finished goods are imported from various countries at higher price for
domestic use creating imbalance.
The soap manufacturing
firms lack in marketing activities as they use traditional mode of marketing
through posters, cable-TV adds, etc but few of the large firms equally compete
with the multi- national’s advertising approaches. The soap firms totally
emphasizes on distributor’s wishes of advertising and promotions for the
customers. The soap firms should concentrate on the competitive-edge through
marketing and quality assurance.
The soap firms hardly
invest on packaging of their products. Most of the soap firms outsource
packaging. Mostly firms copy each other’s brand to compete in the market which
gives a set-back to the local industry. The soap manufactures should expand
both domestically and capture the international markets through exports. If
manufacturers concentrate on marketing they can have international agents,
intermediaries who have a great knowledge of the native markets, have wide
network channel and manage value chain.
Despite of the large
markets of suppliers of raw-material and buyers of soap products, the
manufacturers failed to capitalize the opportunity and unable to capture the
domestic and International markets. The main reason being the energy crisis
which are haunting the industry from last one decade on continuous basis. The
load shedding of power and gas shortage has turned this potential industry into
a recession. Moreover, inability of local manufacturers, undeveloped
infrastructure and support activities restrict them in improving the quality,
making them compete with the multi-national giants soap products in foreign
markets even in the domestic market. Supporting activities such as up gradation
of technology and equipment are the major factors in soap value chain process.
The lack of modern equipment, technology in the local market, restricts the
firms in producing competitive products.
Nigeria does not have a vocational technical college which specifically
gives the modern knowledge of soap machinery and equipment up gradation. The
shortage in supply of skilled and experienced manpower to handle the soap units
acts as a drawback for the supply value chain process. The irregular and costly
supply of raw-material also create large problem leading to heavy loss and
closure of firms. During the last few years, small firms have faced drastic
recession because of costly raw-material, energy crisis and strikes. In a
nutshell, weak physical supply, shortage of finance, no R & D facility,
undeveloped IT support, and lack of knowledge related to modern soap units,
unskilled labor, etc reduce the scope of growth and development in the soap
industry. The value chain of soap industry to achieve maximum level of
productivity and quality is based upon these supporting activities, which help
to identify the potential of growth and expansion in local and International
markets.
1.4 Aims and Objectives
of the Study
The main objectives of the
study are to examine the application of environmental management system in a
domestic and industrial soap production plant.
To reach these objectives, the
following will be answered:
·
Determine current
environmental management practices in Nigerian soap production industries.
·
Show the current situation
with respect to the adoption of ISO 14001 standards in Nigeria.
·
Identify the most important
drivers to the adoption of EMS practices in Nigeria.
·
Identify the most important
problems that companies encounter getting certified to ISO 14001.
·
Access the extent of
compliance to local environmental regulations.
·
Conduct a focused baseline
assessment to identity what really matters for the organization in terms of
environmental performance
·
To review present state of the
environment;
·
To review application of economic tools and
its effectiveness for industrial environmental management.
·
Environmental
Management Systems – provides an overview of
environmental management systems, a discussion of the elements on the ISO 14001
standard, and describes three levels of EMS implementation.
·
Environmental
Management Systems in organisation–discusses
the application of environmental management systems in a organisation setting,
the benefits that municipalities can realize through an EMS, the key success
factors to implementing an EMS in an organisation setting, and the level of
effort required to complete an EMS implementation.
·
Complementary
Systems and Tools: Growing industrial and
government interest in energy and environmental management has led to the
development of a number of concepts and tools that enable organizations to
understand, evaluate and manage the environmental implications of their
operations, services and products. Some tools are:
• Green
procurement;
• Sustainable
community planning;
• Life cycle
management;
• Life cycle
assessment; and
• Sustainable
design.
1.5 Scope of Study
This study is limited only to Domestic and
Industrial Soap production companies in Nigeria
focusing on reviewing industrial compliance to existing main
environmental regulations only and not included others environmental-related
laws. Further, the study mainly reviews use of economic tools in industrial
environmental management in Nigeria.
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