For my book, “Lean and Green: Profit for your Workplace and the Environment,” I asked environment champions at 17 environmentally innovative electronics companies if their companies were doing all they could to go green.

Their responses were startling.

At a large semiconductor company, the champion said they will be green enough when all they need to make semiconductors is sand and water. At an OEM, the champion said they will be green enough when the only things that leave the facility at the end of the day are finished products and employees.

At company after company - among them Apple Computer, Agilent, Celestica, Intel, NEC, Sony and Texas Instruments - the story was the same. Each is highly innovative in going lean and green, but each champion said his or her company could do more.

There’s a bottom line reason why these people set a high bar. They understand the central truth about lean and green: What’s good for the environment is good for profits. They long ago cast off myths about green costing instead of saving money.

Green enough is bound to vary from company to company. One measurable standard is zero waste. Several companies have embraced zero waste. In my book, one company explained zero waste this way: Zero contributions to landfills.

That means anything that comes in the door must be scrutinized to make sure it can either go entirely into products or be composted, reused, recyclable or returned to the vendor. This takes some discipline, but once a company establishes it, the cost savings are enormous. And the pride that employees and shareholders can have about being a zero waste company is immense.

Our web site has many resources for green and lean. And I recently did a podcast on the topic.

Next week I’ll blog on how to sell green initiatives to top executives.

Until then, we’d like to know: What would be green enough at your company?

Posted by Pamela Gordon, July 27th, 2007

Filed to Environment, Lean Practices

|

digg this

Bookmark on del.icio.us

 Email This Post