Environmental training: industrial needs

Cleaner production requires the involvement of all. The quality of any job performed must be judged also on how environmental aspects are handled. It matters for the people designing processes and installations and those running them, but also for the people involved in industrial research, marketing, purchase of materials and even in finance. Their decisions influence the present and future environmental impact of activities too. Good environmental knowledge and experitse for a job in industry requires a broad variety of skills in more than a few fields of science. Furthermore, a simple set of ‘environmental’ requirements for an industrial job in general is impossible even for specific ‘environmental jobs’. There is too large a variation in what industries do, how they are organized and what is therefore expected of people in this respect. Nevertheless, being aware of this variation, to some extent a minimum level can be defined for knowledge and skills which any student must acquire in this field. Because every job involves environmental aspects, these should be part of every course, and the curriculum should cover the relevant aspects in its own field and give some insight into those aspects in other fields (technological, administrative, legal, etc.). For a specific environmental job one should first of all be an able professional in oneʹs own field. Additionally, one should have a more thorough understanding of environmental aspects, particularly, but not exclusively, those connected to that. A basic knowledge of organizational and social sciences is essential. Environmental problems and their solutions are not purely technology based. Improvement measures often require changes in the organization and the attitudes of people. A job in the environmental field asks for good communication skills, in contacts with the people within the organization, the outside world and the authorities. In order to fit skills and knowledge on environmental affairs to the job someone does at a certain moment in a career, a good system of postacademic courses much exist. They must be set up in a modular way and given on several levels, so that one can ‘shop’ for just the right components.