New Zealand Engineering 1998 October

A Strategic Sustainability Plan for the New Zealand Corporate

Ron McDowall is the director of the IPENZ Centre for Sustainable Management

1. Part II of this paper will look at the steps of product stewardship and cleaner production.

When looking at a company with a view of moving it towards sustainability the company must inwardly look at itself and decide where it currently stands. This is where, for the company, the hard bit begins. How to translate the words of sustainability into action plans that are meaningful and work. It is essential that the company management understand that the path to sustainability is time-based. It is not possible nor desirable to shift the company from the "cowboy" or "no regrets" phase directly to sustainability. It is a gradual procedure that passes through three distinct stages within the Corporate Governance phase, that are entirely different in themselves but relatively simple to apply. Within each stage there are milestones to complete in a natural developmental order. By the time the company reaches the third stage it has developed a sophisticated procedure that will allow it to back the winners and make the right decisions. By then it would have shunned the growth at all cost procedure and understood the difference between sustainable growth and sustainable development and have completely turned the company around. The three strategies1 described below follow the pattern of time application and describes the conceptual process that the company must pass through on the way to sustainability.

Part one: waste and pollution governance

Waste and pollution governance implies developing a new fundamental change in core values and core competencies so that management become "Ecocentric". This means that management then have respect of matters environmental and hold themselves responsible for reducing environmental impact at all product development stages. Most companies confuse prevention with control. Pollution control is end of pipe philosophy that is designed to mitigate the pollution of air, land and water. Pollution prevention on the other hand is a philosophy that questions all aspects of the company's operations which produce waste of any kind to determine how to reduce, re-use, recycle or completely eliminate. It is a process that looks at Life Cycle Analysis in terms of production. Companies that are operating in the no regrets phase produce vast volumes of waste materials which are usually picked up by a landfill operator using a standardised bin system. Because of the low landfill costs there is no economic incentive for the company to investigate eliminating the waste produced. This is the first area that must be looked at within the company system.

The most effective methods are often the most simple methods. The so called "why" method falls into this category. As an examination of a production process takes place and the first waste output is considered, the first question is "Why is the waste produced?" The answer may be "because the raw material arrives in a particular packaging". The next question would be "Why does the packaging material arrive with that product?" After that question is answered you keep going back until the real base question is answered which is "can we eliminate the use of that material in our production which produces the waste in the first place?"

Often processes include materials and waste systems that can be eliminated because process changes, introduced on a piecemeal basis, have made the use of particular materials redundant. During this simple process companies are amazed at how a simple change in the process or a simple request of a raw material supplier can lead to vast waste changes in the company's operation. Not only can this simple process lead to large waste reduction but also can often lead to safer and more efficient product processes. Often when engineers and designers configure a new process or a change in a production system they produce what is called a PID drawing. This is a drawing that shows diagrammatically the intended process in terms of the production equipment and the products used, as well as the control and instrumentation. This diagram can easily be used to perform a pollution prevention audit by addition of the relevant process waste and raw material data onto the PID drawing. Very quickly one can see what parts of the process produce waste and effluent and what action in what parts of the process require alteration.

A characteristic of many New Zealand companies is the lack of process diagrams for their operations. For major new projects PID diagrams are often produced but in many cases are not. Existing operations almost never have PID diagrams. For the application of pollution prevention such diagrams are essential. Unless the people examining the operation have a full picture of how the process works and is controlled, you can never work out how to audit the waste production and, additionally, never work out how to change the operation to produce a better result. During the auditing process using a process diagram other matters regarding flow control, work flow efficiencies start to become uncovered. Very soon great changes are effected that can add greatly to the bottom line.

As the technique of waste examination within the company production continues, the emphasis starts to shift towards stewardship. This is where the company first begins the painful examination of itself and its effect on the environment. It is during this process that the top management must be completely committed to the idea of sustainability, and it is a time when the company should perhaps seek some help in establishing the criteria that it will employ for its particular process and manufacturing lines. There are now many consulting engineers trained in sustainability who can assist companies develop this process. Often, for an outsider, it is easier to spot the problems and restrictions as they have no particular axe to grind within the corporate management structure. Once the process of self examination has been defined, then a programme is put in place for application and deadlines set. It is essential to allow sufficient time for the company not only to perform the work but also to be able to handle the changes that will occur. It is not reasonable to have a tight sequential timetable that rapidly seeks out the problems and nominates the changes required if there are insufficient resources to install the changes. A balance must be maintained during the process of problem definitions and application of change. There is a tendency for companies to employ consultants to investigate their waste and pollution problems, instruct them to get on with it, and continue with business as usual. Pollution prevention is a top management concern and one that requires the top management to have a policy and objectives, and a clear vision of what is to be achieved. By all means use a consultant to identify the details of the changes required, but properly manage the process. It is unacceptable for company directors or senior managers who cannot name the major waste streams and pollutants their corporation produces, and then state what their company is doing about it.

This is not to say that the process is simple. In the eighties it was fashionable (from a theory point of view) for all company managers to know what the company's marketing strategy was. There are still many companies trading today that have legions of managers who have no idea what the company's marketing strategy is. To assume that your company will have the internal competency to assimilate the pollution prevention strategy is a big ask and that is why it is essential for top management to be involved at the very beginning in this process. Top management have a simple task to achieve but one that forever has appeared to be difficult to achieve. When a top manager is considering the concept of pollution prevention he needs to ask if his or her corporation is exercising a basic "duty of care" to the planet. All senior managers, directors and the like completely understand the concept of duty of care when it relates to corporate responsibility and how that relates to product development from legal perspectives. Therefore, there will be no difficulty in accepting the idea of duty of care being applied to pollution prevention. Top management have a duty of care to pollution and waste. Once the consumers have instilled that into the corporate intellect the company is in an excellent position to commence the process of sustainability.