It is arguable that whether or not companies, which make pollutions, should take proportionally responsibility on environmental conservation. Some people insist on the principal of ‘polluter pay’, while some others are against this perspective. In my opinion, I agree that pollution-intensive companies should take more effort on cleaning up the environment.
Companies have to tackle the pollutions they made during their operational process given that the pollutions usually have externality. For example, the greenhouse gas productions in one country are usually from only few carbon-intensive companies during their operations. However, the negative consequence of climate change, resulting from greenhouse gas emission, is placed on every single person in the world, even though not everyone benefits from the products or services provided by the companies. Obviously, it is unfair for those victims. Therefore, I proposed that companies should take their social responsibility rather than focus merely on the profit they can make. Moreover, companies usually have more capacities to make change and scaled up the environmental protection initiatives.
Additionally, many companies actually heavily rely on natural resources. For instance, clean water and sound ecosystem are crucial for agriculture industry. In detail, companies in that industry can only sustainably operate when the soil is healthy enough for growing plants. Therefore, agriculture companies should adopt environmental friendly approaches to run their business. In contrast, the companies may lose their business advantage in a long run if they only focus on the short-term benefit without either controlling the pollution production or investing in environment clean up.
In conclusion, I agree that companies that produce more pollution should contribute more on environmental protection effort. Not only because of the fairness issue, but a healthy environment will also support the business to thrive sustainably.