Category Archives: Going Green

Is it Green, or Just More Greenwashing?

Terrachoice recently released its annual “Sins of Greenwashing” study and the results are, unfortunately, not surprising to anyone familiar with the reality of today’s green marketing. According to the study, 95% of the 5,296 products that were reviewed are still making some kind of green claim are still committing at least one greenwashing sin.

And some of the sins are getting worse. 70% of products offer no proof of their claims and over 30% include a label that looks like a third party certification, but isn’t. In other words, in an attempt to part you from your green, some marketers are making up green claims. It’s appalling.

So how do you spot a fake? You can brush up on your Greenwash Guides, such as the one put out by Ogilvy Earth, or you can remember this one simple rule of thumb that, while not always true, is a good start: if it’s green, it costs less green.

Think about it. A product that is produced through a green manufacturing process uses less water, less power, and/or less non-renewable/non-recyclable raw material. Water costs money. Power costs money. And non-renewable/non-recyclable materials cost more in the long run than renewable/recyclable materials. So if it’s truly green, it was made green, and cost the company less to make than non-green products using non-green methods. So you shouldn’t be paying a premium.

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The Best Supply Chain Ideas for a Greener Planet

SupplyChainBrain recently ran a good article on Ten Steps to Optimizing Your Supply Chain for a Greener Planet that had ten (10) great ideas for making your supply chain more sustainable. However, the following ideas, sometimes overlooked, are the ones that will really green your supply chain.

  • Demand-Driven ProductionIf you really want to be planet-friendly, the first thing you have to do is stop producing excessive amounts of waste — and if you’re wasting valuable resources to produce product that ends up in the trash, that’s end-to-end waste.
  • Network Planning Worry about how you are going to get your product or service to your customer before you start production, not after. Then you’ll realize that it’s not necessarily cheaper or better to produce your product halfway across the world and then ship it by air. And you’ll realize that it’s not always easy to find the right carrier at the last minute. If the only carrier available to truck your product at the last minute is one that uses lanes through a central distribution centre (DC) half-way across the country, that’s not green.
  • Quality ImprovementIf you shift from low-cost to high-quality, and produce items that last for decades or years, instead of years or months, you reduce the amount of waste going to landfills every year. And it is possible, even in consumer electronics where better models come out every year and everyone feels the urge to upgrade. There’s no reason you can’t build to upgrade. Instead of building one integrated device, build a device modular so that an end consumer can easily plug and play a new memory module, processor, or battery — and settle on uniform form factors so that these plug and play modules can be recycled into lower end products that can still serve a functional use, especially in schools or developing nations. Product life spans can be tripled. And, if possible, shift unnecessary processing power “to the cloud” so that a thin client device can be used for decades. Oracle gets this. The Sun Ray III is expected to last 25 years!
  • Preventative MaintenanceIf you use predictive modelling and regular inspections and repair faulty parts before they cause a breakdown, your equipment will often last much longer, at a lower lifetime Total Cost of Ownership! This is as true of personal electronics (if a fan dies in your dual-fan laptop, replace it before the other dies and your core overheats and takes your machine with it) as it is of production line equipment.
  • Integrated PlanningIf everyone is on the same page, it’s more likely that your attempts to reduce waste will succeed. Otherwise, if you make a decision that doesn’t sit well with another department, and order a “wrong” part, you might end up wasting an entire shipment when the other department reorders the “right” part.

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The Triple-A Approach to Growing Green

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review on “growing green“: three smart paths to developing sustainable products presented three broad strategies that those companies looking to obtain green growth can consider. While each strategy, as the article suggests, can be used independently, the best results will be obtained if all three can be used in unison. But first, the strategies:

1. Accenturate

Accentuation is the process of identifying and playing up existing, or latent, green attributes in the current portfolio. For example, if your company has been developing products with environmentally friendly raw materials or using recyclable packing for decades since before it came into fashion, you can already claim some level of environmental sensitivity. (And even a small claim can lead to substantial savings if the sustainability claims are not exaggerated — the media is quick to pick up on, and shame, greenwashers. For example, Brita increased its sales 23% compared with the category market average of 2% with such a strategy.)

2. Acquire

If there are no green products in your portfolio, buy someone else’s. If you can find one that has a good reputation, but lots of room for growth, you can hit the leprechaun’s jackpot. Just don’t try to integrate their operations into yours too rapidly if there is a cultural divide. The acquired company might have to operate as a separate division for a while. During this time, you’ll need to observe them and slowly replicate the most productive practices and ideals throughout your operations. After all, they’ve already mastered eco-friendly manufacturing, sustainable supply chain management, and green market development, so you need to learn from them.

3. Architect

If your company has a history of innovation and considerable new product development capability, building green products from scratch is an option. Even though this approach is the slowest of the three, it’s actually the most valuable as it forces the company to acquire valuable sustainable competency.

But the best approach for most companies will be a combination of all three strategies. The company should start by identifying and capitalizing on any sustainable products or processes it already has in place. As long as it doesn’t over-reach in its claims, this will help it to establish some street cred. Then it should look for an appropriate acquisition target. Not only will this add credibility by adding more green products to the product line, but it will give the company the expertise it needs to design, manufacture, and market new green products. Then, it should take what it has learned and start architecting it’s own green products, replacing those products in its catalog that aren’t green one by one. Eventually, everything will be green and it will clearly stand out from the crowd when compared with its competition.

For more information on how to accentuate, acquire, and architect, check out the article. It also has some great questions to ask when deciding if a particular strategy is right for you.

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Is a 45,000 fine in your future?

Any UK organization with half-hourly metered electricity that used more than 6,000 MWh in 2008 that does not register for the UK-wide CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme before September 30, 2010 could be fined as much as £45,000!

Previously known simply as the Carbon Reduction Commitment, the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is an emissions trading scheme introduced by the UK government to cut greenhouse gases by 1.2 million tonnes of carbon per year by 2020. Organizations are now required to monitor their emissions, and if they exceed this threshold, they need to purchase allowances to emit additional tonnes of CO2 or face a hefty fine.

The government estimates that as many as 5,000 organizations exceed the threshold, but only 1,229 have registered to date. Eligible private and public sector organizations that don’t meet the registration deadline will be immediately fined £5,000 plus an additional £500 penalty for every subsequent working day the company fails to register, to a maximum of 80 days. Is your company one of the roughly 3,800 that hasn’t registered yet? Are you sure?

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Three Great Tips for Redesigning Your Logistics Network

A recent article in Logistics Management contained 6 Network Redesign Tips designed to help you reduce distribution costs. The following three tips are particularly relevant regardless of the type of supply chain you operate:

  • Being Green Can Bring More Green If it’s truly green, it saves you money. If a solution that purports to be green increases costs, then you can be sure it’s another example of greenwashing, because truly green solutions reduce the requirements for energy, water, and other natural resources, which ultimately decreases costs. Examples given in the article include replacing high-intensity discharge lights with energy-efficient fluorescent lighting, installing solar panels, and utilizing fans for air circulation, but there are dozens of ways you can reduce costs. See the green and sustainability archives for other items.
  • Get Creative With Transportation As per the article, start by finding ways to eliminate empty miles and increase truckload utilization, but don’t stop there. It’s not just plane, train, and truck … there’s also bus and even automobile. Busses often have empty space and are used in some countries regularly to haul small loads, and sometimes you should off-load your smaller shipments to Fedex and UPS who use smaller, energy efficient vehicles.
  • Create an Off-Shore, On-Shore, Near-Shore Blend for FlexibilityThe last thing you want to do, as a result of a supply disruption in your factory half-way around the world, is expedite multiple shipments by air that would normally go on a single ocean carrier. Not only does this send transportation costs sky-high, but it can also increase your carbon footprint. (Yes, ocean carriers, which aren’t subject to the same clean-air requirements of land-based vehicles, are dirty … but your footprint is often just a fraction of the carbon-produced as you’re sharing the load with dozens [or hundreds] of other shippers. However, if you’re filling multiple planes worth of merchandise, that carbon footprint adds up fast.) However, if you also sell into foreign markets, the last thing you should be doing is on-shoring everything. The best strategy for today’s multi-national is a blended strategy. This will minimize disruptions and costs.

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