To a considerable extent, environmental policy and governance has its roots in the regulation of industrial emissions to water, air and soil. The first wave of environmental policy making, starting in the 1960s, consisted mostly of laws and regulations to combat pollution to air, water or soil. It resulted in end-of-pipe filters and treatment facilities at the level of single factories. The implementation of economic instruments as well as a target group approach has later on resulted in process integrated measures, cleaner production, and pollution prevention at industrial sector level. The most recent stage in the greening of industry, as a result of ongoing globalization, has led to various wide ranging modes of governance towards industrial production and consumption. We are now talking about industrial chain management, industrial ecology, international certification systems like ISO 14001, and cradle-to-cradle principles. Governing the greening of industry now involves state and non-state actors from local to global levels managing energy and substance flows from resource extraction up to processing and final consumption. 

Questions that emerge when studying the very complex and challenging governance of the greening of industry are: What kind of governance arrangement are necessary to reduce the impact from industrial activities on the global environment? Who should be involved: the state, industry actors, civil society? And what kind of governance arrangements have been developed so far? How do they look like and how do they work? Are they being effective and why? And how do these governance arrangements deal with the globalization of politics and economy?