Beyond Disposal

Most of the world's waste is not household trash, and most of the decisions that create it are not made by consumers. They are made inside firms: in product design, materials specification, supply-chain configuration, and the choices that determine what becomes a resource and what becomes a liability.

Beyond Disposal argues that the corporation, not the municipality, holds the practical levers over the global waste and emissions system, and that corporate social responsibility has matured from a communications exercise into a measurable strategic discipline. Drawing on doctoral research and dozens of current corporate cases and regulatory developments, Igor Rivilis traces how waste became a global question, why disposal alone cannot answer it, and how the traditions of waste management, environmental management, and corporate social responsibility have converged.

At its center is an integrated model that links those three traditions into a single capability a firm can build, audit, and improve, with a verification layer that turns declared performance into audited performance. Clear-eyed about the regulatory architecture now arriving, from the European Union's reporting and packaging rules to global disclosure standards, it is a practical account of what serious corporate responsibility actually looks like, written for the executives, regulators, investors, and students whose decisions will determine whether the integrated approach becomes how the corporate sector operates.