Top 5 Environmental Risks Caused by Business

In these days of economic meltdown and recession, climate change has taken a back position to the doomsday prophecies of a world without banking conglomerates. In a recently published IMF report Britain is named as the one major country in the world not likely to be able to shake of recession by the year 2010. Instead recession is likely to deepen and with that almost certainly there will be more layoffs and longer lines in front of the unemployment office.

With these grim prospects for the future, it is perhaps no surprise that the climate agenda is being given a low priority by many businesses. Nevertheless, scientists are increasingly making everyone aware of the risk of continued misuse of the planet's resources and the environmental risks associated caused by businesses at a global level.

One American scientist recently published his predictions in which he claimed that the polar caps would be all but gone in no more than 10-15 years. While most people will probably take that information rather casually, it is a sign of the severity of man made climate change. The main culprit being big business and mass production.

Of course now is not a good time to go forward with direct legislation to hinder business growth, so the more sensible solution continues to be to inform decision makers on how their actions cause environmental risks and how they can change their procedures to reduce the damage they are causing or contributing too and still cut costs.

1)Depletion of Fossil Fuels:
There is only so much oil in the world left, which last years unprecedented surge in prices confirmed. As long as companies are insisting on using environmentally unsound and vastly wasteful practices, especially in regards to transportation, the fossil fuel consumption will continue to stay a level that is threatening to climate change in the long run.

2)Outsourcing of Hazardous Work:
While it may seem like a good and cost effective solution in the short term, outsourcing dirty work to third world countries is not a viable long term solution. Indians chopping up scrap metal and dealing with dangerous asbestos on an daily basis, is not a sustainable solution, either environmentally or morally. In the long run, practices will have to change to protect people's basic Human Rights.

3)Investments in Unstable Regions:
For a long time, so called growth economies were popular as investment prospects because of their high return, while investors completely ignored the abysmal conditions facing the environment and people in places like Bangladesh.

4)Dumping of Industrial Waste:
Even though this area has seen improvement over the last decade or two, there is still a large problem with unsupervised waste dumping. Causing harm directly to the environment and the people who depend upon it, such as fishermen.

5)Depletion of Natural Resources:
The rain forest is rapidly disappearing due to the continued demand for paper worldwide. Online printing companies could opt to use paper sourced from sustainable forests for their business card printing.