Exponent services

Exponent’s ecologists and resource economists provide companies and government agencies with strategic support on implementing strategies for identifying, accounting for, and sustaining ecological assets. Corporations are looking for sustainable ways in which they can maintain profitable business operations and minimize their environmental footprints. One important aspect of a firm’s environmental footprint is the effect of operations on ecological services. Ecological services are natural processes that provide environmental benefits or benefits to humans, such as groundwater recharge, potable water, and wildlife habitat. Conventional practices such as mitigation and restoration can be costly to companies, but these costs can be partially or wholly offset by monetized credits traded in markets and good will. The credit market works on the basic economic laws of supply and demand and companies that earn credits can sell them to generate revenue.

Assessing the potential effects on natural communities, ecosystems, and individual organisms, or selected groups of organisms, within ecosystems is becoming integral to the regulation of pesticides and industrial chemicals. In certain cases, potential effects on the environment drive the decisions regarding uses of a chemical. In the U.S., the legal framework for evaluating uses and potential environmental effects and risks of chemicals includes the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and other federal and state environmental statutes. The U.S. EPA has primary responsibility for overseeing and administering many of these requirements. Similar legislation exists in the EU, including the Plant Protection Products Directive (919/414/EEC) and the BIocidal products Directive (98/8/EC).