Category Archives: Going Green

To Green Your Supply Chain, Start with Packaging

Just about everything these days is still overpackaged. From the software DVD that comes in a box big enough to hold 20 to 50 of them to the laundry detergent that takes a box at least twice as large as necessary as it is not concentrated to even the bottle you’re drinking your water from, everything is overpackaged. The water bottle is a good case in point. You’re probably thinking this is probably the most compact packaging there is as, at least in this case, it’s usually 95% to 98% full, in addition to being light. However, in many cases, better technology can reduce the plastic required by half!

For example, as pointed out in this recent article on a “Chain Reaction” in Materials Management & Distribution, Nestle Waters Canada has been able to reduce the amount of plastic required to make a half-litre bottle from 20g to 9.1g! That just tells you how much overpackaging there is in the average densely packaged product with poorly designed packaging. And considering how wasteful packaging is to begin with (even if its recycled, as a lot of energy goes into producing packaging, and a lot more into recycling it), this is bad.

Furthermore, not only will you green your supply chain if you save packaging (as you will be using less raw materials and energy), but you’ll be saving a lot of money, as you will be able to fit more product on a truck, or ship the same amount of product with less fuel (as it will weigh less).

The Triple Bottom Line will Soon Be The Norm

Is your Supply Management organization ready?

The Triple Bottom Line — which balances economic, environmental, and social performance in order to make a corporation more sustainable — is gaining more support by the day. As per this recent article over on Chief Executive on the ‘Shareholder Push for the “Triple Bottom Line”‘, the percentage of social and environmental shareholder resolutions that garnered at least 30% shareholder support, rose from a mere 3% in 2005 to 26.6% in 2010. At the current rate that support is increasing, it’s just a few years before the majority of social and environmental shareholder resolutions exceed the 30% threshold and not many more years before the majority of well-formed social and environmental resolutions pass.

So, is your Supply Management organization ready?

Unless it is a true CSR leader, probably not. So where should it start? Near the end of 2008, CAPS published a “Critical Issues Report” that addressed the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework offered some suggestions for an organization that wanted to get started on the TBL path. Specifically, the report recommended that an organization:

  • Smart small (but do something).
  • Insure proposed strategies are aligned with overall corporate strategies and goals.
  • Incorporate green into your purchasing and sourcing processes.
  • Be proactive.
  • Make sure you’re not just greenwashing.
  • Form a cross-functional team to scale your efforts company wide.

BioPlastics – Another Easy Way to Conserve Petroleum Supply

There are two easy ways to conserve petroleum supply by over 10% annually in the US (and higher still in countries where petroleum is used as a major energy source for electricity production). The first is to stop burning oil for electricity. There is just no need to be using petroleum (products) for electricity production given the plethora of alternate options available, including natural gas, (clean) coal, nuclear, wind, hydro, and waste. If we didn’t burn oil for electricity production, oil refinement, process heat, and heat for industrial buildings, a good 13% of annual usage could be conserved.

The second way is a full-out switch to bioplastics. Right now, plastics consume at least 1 of every 10 barrels of oil in the US every day. That’s a lot. And considering that we can now produce a 100% plant-based PET product made from fully renewable sources that has a molecular structure identical to petroleum-based PET products, there is no reason not to switch to bioplastics. The only reason they are currently more expensive than petroleum based plastics is economy of scale. If everyone started investing in them, the costs would come down as the resulting investment would fuel R&D which would, in turn, create better materials that can be synthesized quicker, easier, and more cost effectively.

But it’s not going to happen until, as the author of this recent article in Environmental Leader on “turning plants into plastics” hints at, one of two things happen:

  • Supply Chain Sustainability Catches On in a Big Way
    And the leaders decide to move to bioplastics en-masse before oil-based plastics become prohibitively expensive. Or
  • Government Mandates the Move to BioPlastics
    The tax credits suggested by the author won’t be enough. The government has to mandate it, because, unless the tax credits make bioplastics significantly cheaper, the average organization will hold off on the switch.

Personally, I’d like to see the government ban non-bioplastics for all common uses in industry and retail. Just like I’d like to see them ban the use of oil for electricity production. Reserving oil for transportation (where electricity still isn’t an option most of the time), agricultural and construction machinery, and (family) home heating, where it would cost too much to retrofit millions of homes, would decrease petroleum need by about 25%. That’s 1 in 4 barrels saved for future use. This would not only extend the life-span of our oil supply, but keep costs down as well.

If You Want To Know How Green a Data Centre Is, Ask For a Verified PUE

In a recent article, Global Services asked if “cloud computing [is] really green”. Considering that most of your supply chain apps are moving to the cloud, and that sustainability is a must, it’s a question you should be able to answer. Unfortunately, the article was completely useless and gave you no useful information whatsoever.

All it said was that

  • a recent study from Microsoft noted that, due to increased efficiency and scalability, outsourcing companies can reduce their energy use and carbon footprint by up to 90%,
  • an uninterrupted power supply is required to keep data warehouses running and cool, and
  • energy efficiency is not green on its own, and is no longer enough.

With respect to these statements

  • we all know scale adds efficiency, and that data centres will be much more energy efficient if they use modern high-density low-power blades while you use ancient box servers,
  • classic data centres will create sauna temperatures if not kept cool, and
  • the energy source needs to be renewable.

In order to determine how green a data centre is, you need to know at least the following three metrics:

  • The Performance Per Watt (PPW) of the hardware.
    This tells you how efficient the hardware is. Typically measured in MFLOPS (Mega Floating point Operations Per Second) or LINPACK FLOPS per watt, an efficient modern IBM BladeCenter can get up to 536 MFLOPS/watt. Compare this to a desktop Beowulf cluster that maxes out at 58 MFLOPS with 4 dual core Athlon 64’s.
  • The average load of each operating machine.
    If a machine is only operating at 20% load, on average, you’re only getting 20% of the PPW. But if the average load of each operating machine is 80%, you’re getting at least 80% of the PPW. A modern data centre uses dynamic process allocation and virtualization and machines sleep until the load on the machines that are awake exceeds about 90% in a sustained manner, at which point another machine is woken up and added to the available pool. A traditional data centre does not use virtualization or have machines that support fast wake-up or shut-down or dynamic load balancing software and the machines are always on.
  • The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).
    PUE is a measure of how efficiently a data centre uses power and measures how much power is used by the computing equipment in contrast to the overhead required for lighting, cooling, etc. Defined as Total_Facility_Power / IT_Equipment_Power, an ideal data centre has a PUE of 1.0. While not achievable, a PUE of 1.1 is, even though the average data centre still has a PUE of 2.0 to 2.5. Today, a data centre is generally considered green if it has a PUE of < 1.5, but the best data centre in Europe, datadock, has a PUE of only 1.21 and the Thor Datacenter in Iceland has a PUE of only 1.07 and a zero carbon footprint. With carbon emission mandates coming into effect around the globe and significant mandates for power reduction by 2020, if the data centre isn’t closing on a PUE of 1.2, it’s not efficient. And unless at least one its primary energy sources is not renewable, it can not be considered green. (At the very least, the overhead should come from renewable sources.)

So don’t get confused by grandiose claims, scale, and jargon. Ask for these third-party verified metrics. Then you’ll know how green the data centre really is.

It’s Not Green If

It’s not green if:

  • it’s always on and using full energy requirements (even if it uses less energy than a previous model)
    Some systems can’t be turned off, even if they are only used (on average) five minutes a day because they have to monitor for, and respond to, exceptional events. But if they draw the same amount of power whether they are performing a function or just listening for a signal, they aren’t green. A green system will sleep when not required, and wake up when a signal is received, and in the case of computers, utilize only a fraction of full power to maintain the contents of active RAM.
  • production or disposal is less environmentally friendly than other options
    Truly green products do not contain hazardous materials and are designed so that they are easily recycled or the raw materials are easily reclaimed for future reuse. In addition, the production should require less power and water than previous generations.
  • you simply install new software on old, energy hogging, hardware
    Taking an old PC with a 300 watt power supply and installing Linux does not make it green.

and, finally, it’s not green if:

  • it’s painted green
    Taking an old product and painting it green does not make it green!