Worldwide, voluntary environmental approaches have been operating for over 50 years. This dissertation reviews voluntary environmental programmes for pollution prevention from five countries to create ‘best practice’ design criteria. Currently New Zealand has five councils implementing voluntary pollution prevention programmes for industry; these programmes are surveyed and compared to the ‘best practice’ design criteria. Voluntary approaches require policy support, this review identifies policy mechanisms that support voluntary environmental approaches. New Zealand national and local environmental policy is analysed and compared to the identified policy mechanisms and recommendations are made.