Principle 9: Corporate Citizenship (Item 5)
The organization's action to ensure a clean, safe, fair and prosperous
society enhances the perception of its value to the community.
You must work to systematically reduce the waste and pollution your
organization produces.
We believe that over the next twenty years we will see a significant
shift in the way companies think about products and waste. We can
see the beginnings already. In that people are aware of waste management
and that pollution is "not a good thing". However, the thinking
shift from "our waste must be managed so we meet our regulations"
to "our systems thinking about the relationship between waste
and our products gives us a competitive advantage" is not yet
here – except for a few companies.
Currently, most companies have at least moved to the "regulation
obeying, good corporate citizen stage". Few are adopting the
full systems approach.
An example. Is your waste water good enough to use as input to your
plant? If not, why do you think it is good enough for the next person?
De Bono's famous solution for a highly polluted river is to take your
input from downstream of your waste. This forces a systems solution.
[We could extend the problem to human waste and suggest the solution
that sewage treatment be upstream of potable water catchment reservoirs.
That solution will probably be required eventually and will need considerable
systems thinking to implement – especially at no increased cost.]
We hear scoffing. "All that greenie stuff is impractical. People
might say they want it, but we can't afford it. We will take our profits
now. That is what our shareholders want. Not this expensive, greenie
gobbledygook!"
That take-it-now-and-damn-the-environment approach is not sustainable.
The Principles for Business Excellence consistently argue for the
company's sustainability. By that, we always mean that the company
will be around for a long time – at least a hundred years. Even
if your day-to-day pressures and worries stop you from seeing that
far, it is not logical or practical to conduct actions that you know
will stop your company being sustainable. If all your customers are
dead, or suing you for harming them, your company will not be sustainable.
By 2005, if you are not enforcing good environmental
solutions within your business, large or small, you will no longer
be sustainable. This is realistic.
We are seeing more examples of companies that turn their waste stream
into a profitable product. For example, restaurants and abattoirs
that turn waste food or animal wastes into vermicast (ie worm casts)
that is now sold.
We often hear the argument that "if we do this greenie stuff,
we die". That assumes the `greenie stuff' will add costs. It
does not have to. That was the same argument that was applied to improving
quality. "If we improve quality, it will increase our costs."
The reality is that if you improve quality, you reduce rework and
waste (which are very expensive) and increase sales because of increased
customer satisfaction. But that is an old message. Implementing environmental
solutions has similar advantages.
It is worth while for all companies to work out how to sell their
waste stream, or turn the waste stream into a profitable product.
|