Environmental knowledge management of finnish food and drink companies in eco-efficiency and waste management

Abstract

Environmental knowledge management helps organizations to achieve their environmental, business, and economic goals. This paper, through the analysis of semi-structured interviews from 11 Finnish food and drink companies, presents how they acquire, share, create, use, and accumulate their environmental knowledge eco-efficiency and waste management from a product life cycle perspective. The findings indicate dominance of tacit over explicit knowledge approaches and greater development of knowledge on raw materials compared to energy efficiency and waste management. Learning by doing, learning from others, formal and informal meetings, measuring and optimizing production parameters are the most important activities in reducing environmental impacts and increasing eco-efficiency. The paper identifies two more findings relating to gaps in knowledge sharing and retention and it proposes some solutions how to overcome them. The main contribution of the paper is demonstration of the life cycle and knowledge management approach that could help companies to identify and understand their eco-efficiency and waste management aspects. Furthermore, this paper outlines how companies could integrate these aspects into their organizational and technological structure.