Agenda - Planning Commission - 07/07/1998

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Resources on Industrial Ecology Cairncross, Frances. Green, Inc.: .4 Guide to Business a,d the Envi~vnme,t. Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1995. Center for Neighborhood Technology. CNT Web Site. Chicago: Center for Neighborhood Technology (www. cnt. org). Last accessed 5/28/98. (Contains information on sustainable manufacturing.) Cornell University. Work and Environment Initiative Web Site ( www. cfe. cornell, edtdWEI/EID, html), kast accessed 5/28/98. Hawken, Paul. The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainabili(y. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. President's Council on Sustainable Development, President's Council on Sustainable Development Web Site. Washington, D.C.: Executive Office of the President of the United States (www2. whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/pcsd/index-plain.htmi). Last accessed 5/28/98. Schley, Sara, and Joseph Laur. Creating Sustainable Organizatiom: Meeting the Economic, Ecological, .and Social Challenges of the 2lst Century. Innovations in Management Series. 1998. Waltham, Mass.: Pegasus Communications, Inc. Socolow, R., C. Andrews, F. Berkhout, and V. Thomas, eds. Industrial Ecology and Global Change. 1994. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Van der Ryn, Sim, and Stuart Cowan. Ecological Design. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1996. Wann, David. Deep Design: Pathways to a Livable Future. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1996. surgically precise manufacturing methods with minimal negative environmental impacts. Environmental sophistication can, however, lead one back to basic principles, and industrial firms are also learning to pay close attention to many relatively simple measures that yield big savings by reusing or recycling waste to reduce disposal costs. Companies like 3M Corporation have used incentives to reward employees both for new product ideas and for those that reduce waste. Computer technology has served as a powerful catalyst in this trend because competitive advantage depends increasingly on the successful management of ideas and information systems. In this new environment, thc most adaptable thinkers tap into the science of systems analysis. For those investigating sustainable methods of industrial development, the system under study is nature itself. The idea is to replicate nature's closed loop in which waste literally does not exist because some organism will always make use of the waste that another produces. The idea behind ecological industrial design is, to the maximum extent feasible, to mimic natural systems by eliminating both extractive raw material inputs and disposal COSTS. A chief target in many cases is the use of nonrenewable fuel sources. For example, as part of the sustainable redesign of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, following the town's 1978 relocation from the Kickapoo River floodplain, one IGA grocery store installed a solar heating system so efficient that, even in that northern climate, it was nine years before the store had to use its backup gas heating system, Service wlth a Smile The firms making the most thorough commitment to industrial ecology, however, look at more than just one input here and another output there. They seek to reinvent their business from the ground up, examining everything they do as part of an overall, ougoing environmental audit. This usually leads to rethinking their enterprise not as one that sells products bt, t as one providing a service. For instance, Interface Carpet Company, one of the largest carpet manu£qcmrers in the world, undertook such a self-evaluation after founder and CEO Ray Anderson decided to examine the company's environmental track record during a business downswing in 1994. The process he turned loose among his 6,000 employees led to the conclusion that Interface's real product was not carpets, but the comfort and service that they provide. This led to the notion that Interface should retain ownership of the materials used in the manufacture of its carpets, allowing customers to lease ca?pet tiles that could be returned for new ones. Old tiles are reconditioned and recycled for use by other customers, rather than being sent to landfills. The result for Interface has been a dramatic combination of improved environmental performance, a better public image, and renewed profitability, some of the latter traceable to customers that have a more positive image of the company because of its innovations. Interface reported $45 million in savings by 1997, accompanied by a 25 percent increase in revenues, now topping $1 billion annually, and a doubling in stock price. This change in the sense of corporate mission can challenge deeply rooted assumptions. Karl-Henrik Robart, the Swedish founder of The Natural Step, an international group that conducts sustainability training sessions for corporations, reports that the CEO of McDonald's Sweden asked, "In a sustainable society, do we really need hamburgers?" The implication was that the real mission was not to sell hamburgers but to provide high-quality fast food at a low cost. McDonald's, however, cannot change solely on its own. The question presupposes that in the future the firm's customers may take a different view of their own dietary preferences in relation to concepts of sustainable agriculture. It is a marketing dilemma any retailer faces. The hamburger chain likely cannot survive such a change in mission unless its customers also embrace the idea. Strategic Partnerships One of the leading concepts in modern business, notes Peter Lowitt, director of planning and economic development for the town of Londonderry, New Hampshire, is that of strategic partnerships. Rather than trying to maintain a large corporate structure that does many things well, corporations focus their energies on a few products and services in which they excel and contract with others who can provide other needed inputs or services more efficiently. No firm is an island; each swims in a sea ofsymbiotlc relationships with other companies, becoming more competitive in part by becoming more cooperative and by choosing its partners well, That, says Lowitt, is precisely the concept behind an eco- industrial park (EIP), a special type of industrial park in which tenants seek to minimize or eliminate their wastes and other environmental impacts through symbiotic arrangements with other firms so that no net waste leaves the park. Instead, one firm's waste is always someone else's feedstock in a strategic web of alliances that makes everyone, including the host community, better offeconomically, socially, and environmentally. Londonderry is working on the development of just such an EIP now. So are Northampton County, Virginia, which occupies the long, narrow peninsula across the Chesapeake Bay from Norfolk, and other communities across the nation, such as Baltimore; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Brownsville, Texas. Many of these are treated in case studies being developed by the Corn¢ll Work and Environment Initiative (WEI) at Cornell University (see "Resources" above).