NETI's legislated mission puts our program in an excellent position to make Massachusetts a leader in responding to this change. While compliance driven technologies will continue to play an important role in pollution prevention, the major challenge for the next 25 years will involve new technologies that lead to fundamental changes that make manufacturing processes inherently less wasteful. U.S. Industry Faces the 21st Century, The U.S. Environmental Industry. This same technological change is also beginning to have an impact on industrial investment. A 1999 Rand Science and Technology Policy Institute study, Technology Forces at Work, reports that major firms like Monsanto, DuPont, Intel, and Xerox are most likely to invest in technologies that improve yield, reduce emissions, increase product and process resource efficiency, create environmentally benign products, and meet customer product requirements.
Investments are less likely to be made in remediation, monitoring, and control technologies.
Thanks to the forward looking vision for NETI, conceived by industry and supported by the legislature six years ago, we are demonstrating that Massachusetts is a place where these kinds of technologies are being developed.