Eco-efficiency has many dimensions, all of which are very important for green
businesses to consider. The World Business Council on Sustainable Development
offers a great guide on where to look for process improvement opportunities:
• Reduce the material intensity of goods or services
• Reduce the energy intensity of goods or services
• Reduce dispersion of toxic materials
• Improve recyclability (and closed-loop
processes)
• Maximum use of renewable resources
• Greater durability of products
Waste: The Opposite of
Eco-Efficiency
Humans and the business world could
earn a lot from a chicken. When a
chicken makes a chicken, the only
l
“wastes” are manure, carbon dioxide,
water vapor, methane and eggshell. But
these are all food for soil, plants and
chickens. Zero waste. Can’t industrial society get that smart?
Your business, regardless of size or
sector, uses energy and materials, and
produces product and “non-product”
(waste, emissions, effluent and pollution). The business logic for eliminating,
not just reducing “waste,” is clear: don’t
pay for more resources than you need;
get the greatest yield from those resources that you can; and stop making
product you can’t sell.
Small Things Add Up
By retrofitting exit signs with LED
ights NOW Foods saved 32,935 k Wh/yr
and kept many lead-containing incandescent bulbs from going into landfills.
The company saved an additional 3,564
k Wh/yr by simply disconnecting the
ballasts and lights on the vending machines. They also installed low-flow
faucets that use ½ gallon of water per
minute, versus 2 ½ gpm for the old
faucets, equating to 60 gallons of water
saved per faucet per day. This equates to
a savings 300,000 gallons of water per
year. Lower-flow urinal valves save an
l
“Waste” has no intrinsic meaning. Just
as a “weed” isn’t a particular type of
plant, but a plant out of place, “waste”
isn’t a particular kind of material, but a
material out of place. (That’s why the word is in quotes—it’s a reminder that
“there ain’t no such thing!”)
additional 60,480 gallons per year.
t
as wastewater, machine washdown and
small amounts of sanitizing chemicals.
Though the cost of wastewater
reatment wasn’t even a rounding
error on anyone’s management report, the reaction from then-CEO
Greg Steptenpohl and then-COO
Michael Young—once they picked
themselves up off the floor—was clear
and powerful: “That makes no sense!”
Within two weeks Odwalla decided to
pursue the only goal that did made
sense—zero waste. After a few months,
Odwalla was able to boost profits by 20
percent with a series of agricultural,
horticultural and aquacultural businesses feeding off that “waste” stream.
All this from an expense that was negligible and invisible on any financial
management report.
So what’s your Total Cost of Waste
(TCOW)? The direct costs of disposing your waste may be relatively
minor (hauler fees), but the indirect
costs of waste can pile up, including
the money spent on raw materials
and utilities; storage (rent); time and
labor; wear and tear on machinery,
etc. The typical total of this indirect
waste is 4 to 25 times the disposal
fees. What’s your acceptable level of
waste? Why?
5% Recycled
Non-Product
How Much Are You
Wasting? Probably More
Than You Would Imagine
The Value of Zero
“Waste” might be a concept without meaning, but it’s a concept with a huge
cost. A “throughput pie” can be used to graphically represent the ratio of product
to non-product output (NPO)—and if a picture is worth a thousand words, this
picture is often worth millions of dollars. Studies show that the ratio for the U.S.
economy as a whole is 6 percent product and 94 percent non-product. Your
mileage may vary, but you can bet the ratio is far worse than you might expect.
When Natural Logic, a consultancy specializing in sustainable operations, assessed Odwalla’s then-new Dinuba, CA, plant in the mid-1990s, it was a well-run,
high-purpose organization—profitable, fully in compliance, using Good Manufacturing Practices—that produced about 20 percent product, about 5 percent recycled non-product (pulp and peel and “everything else they could”) and 75 percent
non-product. Three-fourths of their physical output literally poured down the drain
20%
Product
75% Non-Product
(“Waste”)
Odwalla’s waste “throughput pie” prior
to implementing its progressive waste
program.
