Environmental performance benchmarking of manufacturing plants in Mexico and the United States

This research compares the environmental performance of manufacturing plants in Mexico and the United States. To do this, I develop an environmental performance benchmarking method in terms of a quantitative instrument, the environmental performance indicator (EPI), which measures the ratio of various air emissions to the production for each manufacturing plant. Benchmarking environmental performance method for manufacturing plants involves six steps. The first step is gathering the environmental and economic data of manufacturing plants in Mexico and the U.S. from company and government sources. The second step involves the analysis and standardization of the environmental and economic data from each country. The third step involves the selection of the industrial sectors to be studied. In this study, the rubber tire industry, Portland cement industry, and coal-fired electricity generation industry were the sectors selected. The fourth step is to develop the EPI's. Selection of the output measure is a main concern in this step. The fifth step is to benchmark the manufacturing plants through the quantitative EPI's. The sixth step involves looking at aspects that affect the analysis of the environmental performance at a plant level. Results from this thesis research show that environmental performance of manufacturing plants in Mexico and the U.S. can be compared using the EPI. The results shows that nitrogen oxide (NO_x) emissions of Mexican rubber tire plants are lower than U.S. rubber tire plants but sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and particulate matter (PM) emissions are almost three times higher. In addition, Mexican Portland cement plants have better environmental performance than U.S. Portland cement plants because Mexican plants have the newest Portland cement technology in comparison with the U.S. plants. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, the environmental performance of the two Mexican coal-fired power plants that were studied, show up worse than the U.S. coal-fired power plants, because U.S. power plants are burning a cleaner fuel. In addition, the technology of the two Mexican plants did not feature emission reduction provisions, that could have been included as part of the original design.