Green Living
Green Work
Steps to Make your Manufacturing Business Greener
As a manufacturer, you work hard to keep costs down, profits up, and your customers happy. But can you stay competitive and reduce your environmental footprint at the same time? The answer is yes. Being Lean and Clean could even give you the advantage.
OEMs face several key challenges in developing an environmental compliance plan. It is important for companies to develop a compliance roadmap and implement a structured environmental monitoring and compliance process. This also includes leveraging the necessary tools to monitor new and emerging environmental regulations, analyzing how these environmental requirements will impact their companies and products, and then implementing the conversion and necessary activities to comply.
Companies need to look at environmental compliance from a more strategic or ongoing sustainable manner. This means looking for and being able to maintain global market access and integrating compliance requirements early on in your business processes both from product development and supply-chain perspectives. Compliance needs to be designed into a product development process and into a company's overall processes; it can't be an afterthought. This has to be ingrained into the way we develop products as well as how we manufacture products.
Environmental Roadmap
Companies accredited to ISO14001 implement a number of programs currently to help address key aspects of their performance and to systematically integrate them into their business. They may comprise:
- Environmental Management Systems (EMS)
- Environmental Compliance
- Environmental Performance Indicators (EPIs)
- Environmental Impact of Supply Chain
- Employee Awareness
- Stakeholder Engagement
Environmental Performance Indicators
Track key parameters on a global basis as Environmental Performance Indicators (EPIs):
- Water consumption
- Water discharge
- Energy usage
- Carbon dioxide emissions
- Solid waste generation
- Recycling rates
Green Supply Chain
Electronics manufacturers will find a bank of information at the Green Supply Chain site.
New Construction Projects
Although retro-fitting existing premises with green solutions does help, it cannot beat the long-term gains of building 'green' from the outset. For new builds, with a small increase in initial capital investment you can save much more down the line by incorporating green energy, grey water, reductions in transport and improved supplier chain. All that is needed is a little forethought and far-sightedness. Check-out new legislation in your sector and where the main supplier locations are, then check-out the below tips and links.
Sharp provide an innovative model for an industrial green factory at their Kameyama plant in Japan. Take a look and see what can be applied for your new plant.
Green Plastics?
If you need the properties of plastics in your processes but need something biodegradable, search for green plastics. Learn more about the new generation of compostable bio-plastics as materials and find out about manufacturers and institutes that can help your company.
General Information Sites
- The Biopolymers Web Site
- U. S. National Biobased Products and Bioenergy Initiative
- The Bioplastics Web Site
Green Plastics Organizations
- BEPS: BioEnvironmental Polymer Society
- BPI: The International Biodegradable Products Institute
- BPS: Japanese Biodegradable Plastics Society
Manufacturers
Green Manufacturing Tips
Tips for New Builds
- For new-builds on new sites, ensure that the construction will not harm ecosystems and wildlife habitats.
- Design in sustainable landscaping and watersheds. See our gardening page for more.
- Ensure that drainage is designed to eliminate effluents being emitted to the surroundings.
- Set up waste disposal areas that facilitate segregation and collection.
- Incorporate renewable energies, grey water usage, local materials and even green roofs wherever feasible.
- Promote yourselves to the local community with flyers or articles in local publications highlighting how your investment will benefit the local environment and labour force.
- Even better than just reducing transportation, why don’t you stop some trips altogether? Review some out-sourcing, check what added-value it provides and review setting up that process in-house. You will not only reduce your product’s carbon footprint, but should reduce lead time, documentation and invoicing overheads.
- Have your plans reviewed by experts prior to submission for planning permission. They may also be able to simplify the planning approval by highlighting the 'green' aspects of your project.
Tips for Existing Factories
- Review new legislation in your sector and be proactive in setting programmes to address it before it comes into effect.
- If your customer base is mainly local, there is no need to manufacture overseas, just get your main suppliers to comply with your green procurement policy.
- Develop processes that don’t create waste in the first place. Identify waste in your processes: click here.
- Devise, implement and communicate your Environment Roadmap (see above)
- Reduce, reuse and recycle packaging
- Reduce, reuse water, cutting fluid and oils wherever possible or even outsource fluid management
- Recycle your process liquids. Omega Systems specializes in solvent recycling systems as well as oil and water recycling machines.
- Implement lean manufacture metrics (it will reap reduced costs and waste)
- Use bio foams and bio-plastics
- Commission an environment consultant such as Envirowise or Carbon Trust to report on how you can reduce emissions
Green Manufacturing Links
Looking for innovative toolkits offering practical techniques and strategies that can help your shopfloor to deliver environmentally protective lean decisions as a routine task of your lean driven business operations? Click here.