Summit Shows Varying Approaches to Green Manufacturing

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- “Most people get on with green manufacturing really rather badly. It’s a whole new type of business strategy,” said Stephen Stokes, vice president of climate change and business for AMR Research, at the start of the Green Manufacturing Summit’s Thursday session.

The event highlighted examples from business and government of how to bring sustainability to providing products and services.

Stokes touched on a number of concepts businesses have embraced in their different journeys towards sustainability, but ultimately said what is most needed – frameworks, metrics, benchmarking and tools for developing fact-based sustainability – is still missing.

And while more companies understand the benefits both to their bottom line and the environment of going green, some are taking the wrong approach, Stokes said. “A CSR report is the end-point of this journey, not the start,” he said, chastising businesses that put out corporate social responsibility reports without first have holistic strategic visions and real governance over their supply chains, products, energy and resources.

Companies must also be able to adapt as new environmental performance indicators are developed or take over in importance. “Life cycle assessment is soon to replace carbon footprinting,” Stokes said, since assessing the impacts of products and services inherently includes carbon.

Through life cycle assessments, companies can make improvements to one product that can lead to wider efficiency impacts. Pepsi’s U.K. operations were able to cut the amount of energy that goes into a bag of Walkers Crisps chips by first finding out how much of the product’s carbon footprint was controlled directly by Pepsi. The company discovered suppliers accounted for 59 percent of each bag’s carbon footprint, and worked with a potato supplier to cut that figure by using less water in keeping potatoes wet before being processed.

Cleaning products maker Method continually looks at the products and packaging it uses or could switch to in order to constantly assess what it can improve. The company follows a mantra of “progress, not perfection,” said Jason Crouch, Method’s director of procurement.

Some Method packaging is now made with 100 percent post-consumer waste, and some is made from bamboo. Those could remain or change; the company looks at a number of criteria (environmental impact, cost, aesthetics, etc.) when examining new options. Neither the cheapest nor the lowest-impact choice will always win.

A manufacturing topic that has not yet gained traction in the U.S. but is making headway in the U.K. is carbon abatement analysis, Stokes said, a method for looking at the cost of a project or initiative relative to the amount of carbon it prevents or removes. The analysis shows which actions have high and low positive or negative returns of interest, making it easier for companies to see which action would have both the best impact and lowest cost. Hybrid cars as a whole, Stokes gave as an example, are one of the most expensive ways to reduce carbon.

The Green Manufacturing Summit is being held in conjunction with the Green Purchasing Summit and Green Transportation and Logistics Summit as part of the Sustainable Supply Chain Summit.

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