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While the limited resources and strict environmental regulations make the manufacturers to adopt effective and powerful environmental management strategies in production, the environmentally aware consumers create new trends in the market, like sustainable consumption, which control and affect decision making. Consequently, not only researchers, but also manufacturing managers are recognizing the importance of environmental management systems used for managing environmental practices. (Porter & van der Linde, 1995; Gupta & Sharma, 1996; Angell & Klassen, 1999; Klassen, 2000; Xigang & Zhaoling, 2000; Sroufe, 2003; Claver et al., 2007).
A major barrier to the adoption of environmental management systems is that companies often do not know the environmental costs of operating their business and therefore do not know the financial benefits that can be obtained by reducing their environmental impacts. Previously, environmental costs were generally defined as costs dealing with environmental laws, regulations, and taxes. It is now recognized that the true environmental costs includes: costs of resources, waste treatment and disposal costs, the cost of poor environmental reputation, and the cost of paying an environmental risk premium. The calculation and evaluation of environmental costs provide better understanding of the production cost of a product, and that it properly allocates costs to product, process, system or facility. Measuring environmental costs also improves the correctness of the pricing and gives profitability and competitive advantage, therefore increases the overall management system of a company (Porter, 1991).
For this reason, environmentally integrated manufacturing decisions require for the consideration of technical, economic, and ecological aspects of the manufacturing processes simultaneously. Especially the companies using hazardous materials in their production have started to consider environmentally integrated manufacturing systems to decrease their impacts on environment and to prevent pollution at source directly.