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12 Comments
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Re: Systems thinking and behavior change
2006-02-16 07:57:01 UTC
Dear Summer:
How does your activity relate to the Don't Mess With Texas program?
L. E. Johannson B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc.
FRSA President E2 Management Corporation (E2M)
113 Mountainview Road South
Georgetown, Ontario CANADA L7G 4K2
Tel: 905-873-9484
Fax: 905-873-3054
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
www.14000registry.com
www.e2management.com
www.glassworks.org -
Re: Green criteria for print material
2006-02-03 11:38:16 UTC
Dear Tim:
One of the interesting opportunities and challenges with green purchasing to be truly effective is that it requires a consideration of the true cost versus just a decision based on price. This is probably not news to you. We did an assessment for a client on the printing process for two books we wrote for them, one a Handbook on Green Productivity and a complementary help book, Greening on the Go: A Pocket Guide to Green Productivity. The assessment included a range of 'green options' - product-based and process: - process issues related to the mill - it operated under ISO 14001 (we did not stipulate certification as a requirement, we inquired about the disclosure options that the standard enables and sought their cooperation on some of the more critical system points) - it also happened that the wood procurement was in line with PEFC/FCS - chlorine free pulp (we opted for one where there was an average of 70%TCF and 30% ECF) - recycled content and source of fibre ( in this case our client chose 100% post consumer content, that had the Environmental Choice logo) we did not again specific this, we allowed the printer to work with us to give us the best array of options at the best price - at the same time we also evaluated how the paper quality would match image quality - ink quality (for which there were two major option categories - soya/vegetable inks or Warren's Waterless Printing) - quality of service of printer - service performance of the printer - ability to meet our timelines (and international shipping requirements) -operation and safety issues We also conducted a plant tour of the two finalists in our assessment process. Ultimately this is a subjective, judgemental call. Significance determination is not an absolute science. The problem with many calls made under the title of 'green procurement' is ultimately many tenders/agreements are still based on price - not on real sustainable value or true life cycle costing. A final note, when we have the opportunity to open the door with a new supplier, we use it as a awareness and education opportunity. We learn more about their business process and we make it an opportunity to firmly but gently send a message about our sincerity in working with the right supplier ( a culture issue). We made it clear to the printer we used and their competitors about the level of concern we had - and that the environmental assessment was equally important to our economic assessment.
Good luck
L. E. Johannson B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc.
FRSA President E2 Management Corporation (E2M)
113 Mountainview Road South
Georgetown, Ontario CANADA L7G 4K2
Tel: 905-873-9484
Fax: 905-873-3054
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected] www.14000registry.com www.e2management.com www.glassworks.org -
Re: Seeking suggestions on event planning services
2006-01-13 16:25:36 UTC
Intrinsic Management Toronto Amanda George 416 593 0094 Ext 231 They have managed projects all over the world, big and little. Know they used to manage BAAM (sp?) network before BAAM was taken over. They have managed local area events for Saturn, etc. They helped us with some tips for the Film Festival for the Annual Conservation Video Contest.
Hope this helps
L. E. Johannson
B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc.
FRSA President E2 Management Corporation (E2M)
113 Mountainview Road South
Georgetown, Ontario CANADA L7G 4K2
Tel: 905-873-9484
Fax: 905-873-3054
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
www.14000registry.com
www.e2management.com
www.glassworks.org -
Re: How many people read newsletters? It depends
2005-12-20 12:22:30 UTC
Dear Pamela:
It depends on the quality of the information, the quality of the writing, the frequency of distribution, how creative visualization is used, the manner in which it is received (email or snail mail), whether it is a highlights document (only showing me the 'sound bite' and then if I want more I read in depth on the topic by the click of a button). I am also EXTREMELY pressed for time - and I am awaiting the day when I can plug my brain in at night to be activated in non-deep sleep periods to download information so that when I wake up in the morning I could assimilate the data and apply as I choose. Of course I am also a person who wants a yellow spot on the floor where Scottie could beam me over to meetings across either of the ponds and bring me home every night.... and yes I still believe in Santa Claus and the tooth faery. Some I have to read, not as they meet my criteria for good writing, but because they are may on occasion act as advance warning for a client on an issue where stupidity reigns over intelligence. Welcome the growth of limits.....time is the real non-renewable resource. I like Leanne's hierarchy summary too.
Cheers
L L. E. Johannson
B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc.
FRSA President E2 Management Corporation (E2M)
113 Mountainview Road South Georgetown,
Ontario CANADA L7G 4K2
Tel: 905-873-9484
Fax: 905-873-3054
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
www.14000registry.com
www.e2management.com
www.glassworks.org -
Re: Developing SM study group in my organization
2005-11-23 09:14:08 UTC
Dear Mindy:
A question of clarification on one of your specific points within your broader request - your interest in helping others to achieve better implementation of an EMS - is this related to ISO 14001 specifically and is this interest geared to small and medium-sized enterprise?
Lynn L. E. Johannson
B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc., FRSA -
Re: Procurement weightings.
2005-11-15 09:35:13 UTC
Dear Rennae:
A classic error in the development of green procurement policies and activities is the lack of understanding of the purchasing process and the mechanisms procurement experts use to effect change - one of the groups you should speak to is your local purchasing association - if they have not done anything then track down other procurement associations in other countries and see who is doing what. As a backgrounder, I have provided an amended excerpt of an article that appeared in the Asian Productivity Organization Journal. (the figures/graphs were removed for this forum)
Cheers
Lynn Johannson B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc., FRSA
LCA - THE PROFIT IN REDESIGNING FOR SUSTAINABILITY:
70% of the cost of a product's development, manufacture and use are determined in the initial design of the product. This makes design a crucial determinant of the product's competitiveness. Environmental risk or value is also in the design; therefore it is critical to the success of greening productivity to eliminate negative environmental impacts in the design phase. If design is under the control of the same organization as production, then the first barrier, communication tunnels or information stovepipes, can be minimized. This allows the business responsible for implementing the greening process to make design changes with substantial savings in cost, reductions in environmental impact, and tremendous improvements in efficiency. Those that have started down the path of innovating should not rest on their initial success. Just as Nature rejuvenates herself yearly, organizations must also have springtime. Keeping a company healthy and profitable over time means working continually to improve every relevant element of its business system. Too often in the glimmer of past successes, or a steady, stable market, companies tend to become complacent. The glow of one success can be quickly overshadowed by a competitor's innovation, and the market's attention is diverted elsewhere. This is a simple reminder that "once-and-for-all solutions" do not work in a dynamic and changing world. While there is benefit to learn more about the details of what LCA has to offer, for the purposes of this discussion it is enough to understand that inputs pre-determine the quality and quantity of outputs. This is often simply stated as "garbage in, garbage out."
THE ROLE OF PURCHASING AS AN INCENTIVE FOR GP
Purchasing has a critical role to play in promoting the adoption of green productivity. Purchasing is already going through its own metamorphosis, moving from a line function to a strategic process supported by continual improvement (Johannson, 1994, 1995, 1996). Purchasers, awakening to the realization that buying green is a crucial component in their risk management process, need assurance and evidence that a supplier is managing environmental resources as carefully as cash flow. For that reason, purchasers need to incorporate the environment as one of their core screening criteria, which includes: Supply and delivery Costs (not just the purchase price!!!) Technology Health and Safety Quality and of course the Environment These criteria are all part of a risk assessment. A quick review of the history of purchasing, since 1950, is useful to understand where the profession has been and where purchasing as a process is headed. This discussion will help in the understanding of the value of purchasing in promoting GP. In the 1950's, the purchaser's role was to execute requisitions in a market that was hungry to buy in a world of isolated economies, focused on rebuilding business after wartime. Decisions within an organization were made in other departments; purchasing was a clerical job in a department. In the 1960's competition for purchasing dollars began and marketing to win a customer's favor grew (so did golf). In the 1970's the oil crisis caused disruptions that made purchasers concerned about the continuity of supply from vendors. Price, not cost, remained the focus of the purchasing function. In the 1980's purchasers had to deal with double-digit inflation. Vendors were squeezed each time there was a transaction in a "price fight" where little else seemed to matter. However, coming through the 1980's and into the 1990's there was the realization that quality was the ticket to a growing international marketplace, and a venue for managing suppliers to achieve a value-added product. While isolated concerns for environmental goods and services started in the mid 1980's with the Blue Angel process, followed by the Canadian Ecologo program, interest in green purchasing did not really start until the early 1990's.
GREEN PROCUREMENT CAME IN THROUGH THE BACK DOOR
Attempts by business and governments to incorporate environmental considerations into activities within an organization's business processes, be it a for-profit or not-for-profit entity, did not start with procurement. They typically started with concerns related to waste and emissions, the focus in the early days being on end-of-pipe practices. Like the salmon swimming upstream, many opted to move against the flow, struggling against the current as they were caught working on issues that were in the public eye. Litter, for example, was an eye catcher in Canada, particularly around the issue of soft drink containers. However, what evolved out of this concern was the blue box program for multi-material recycling, which really has nothing to do with litter and everything to do with better use of resources and diversion of material from landfill. However, waste diversion became the backdrop to the initial focus of green purchasing in governments and industry, which specifically targeted packaging, but this has a limited return despite all the valiant efforts and energies applied. Typically a purchaser, usually a junior person, was called upon by an engineer from production assigned with the task of waste diversion, to find someone who would take the packaging, treated as a waste, "away". A parallel expectation was occurring in households; the public had the expectation that someone else was responsible for taking a package "away". Purchasing was a task involving the acquisition of goods and services, and the purchaser was and in many cases still is, charged with finding the lowest price, not lowest cost. However, as we now know from LCA, 70% of the real opportunity for cost savings, and the related environmental benefits come in design. Therefore, at most the purchaser could only potentially recoup 30%. Experience has shown that this is unlikely to occur except in rare situations as the package material, treated as a waste, conceptually and in practice has minimal, no or negative value. Purchasing approaches for greening when initiated to deal with end-of-pipe challenges, do not make a formula for success; often it leads to a clamoring from those involved in waste management for subsidization. Many green procurement attempts never gained momentum or returned full value as isolated policies and the environmental departments developed programs without soliciting the expertise and support of the purchasing department. These programs focused on promotional activities but outcomes showed little or no result. It was hard to determine any real value gained, as often there was no measurement of the improvement, be it qualitative or quantitative. Green purchasing today is still under development and faces a number of barriers. Organizations that fix on price as the key determinant of the purchasing decision and focus their efforts for environmental improvements to end-of-pipe options, effectively limit their opportunity for real improvement. The tendency in these organizations is to apply narrowly defined environmental criteria to a selection of products or services, and label it as green purchasing. This is an unsophisticated approach, as it restricts the opportunity to leverage purchasing as a mechanism for attaining sustainability.
REPOSITIONING PURCHASING AS A STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS
Why is a strategic approach important to guide green purchasing forward? Consider: .. 55% of all revenue goes to suppliers for goods and services; .. range is 30% for services, as high as 90% for assembly; .. typically 41% of spending goes through purchasing BUT .. 59% are decisions made without the benefit of the purchaser; .. 70% of the cost, both financial and environmental, is in design. Sourcing in a sustainable is essential to supporting real progress in greening productivity. To enable this discussion to move forward a baseline definition is required. 'Greening' typically describes a trend in the global marketplace to incorporate environmental considerations as criteria in core decision making in all personal and business decisions, concerning activities, processes, and products. The term greening has wide application and has been used to refer to such diverse activities as trade, i.e. "Greening the GATT" to greening specific consumer products. It is a term that many publics are comfortable with; it suggests desirable objectives such as clean air, pure water, productive forests, fertile lands, and happy, healthy children. Some specific audiences see the term as being abused and overused by those who have made unsubstantiated marketing claims. The term 'green', as with the term 'greening', is used as an adjective with a broad reference to a product, service, and/or a process having one or more environmental attributes. It is this definition that will be used to refer to the 'greening' of the supply chain in this paper, although it does not infer a strict definition of conditions or performance levels. In accepting end-of-pipe designations as 'green', many of the costs, both environmental and financial, are still willingly acquired by the purchaser, but without understanding the consequences. There may even be additional liability transferred to the purchaser. Green procurement is still in its early days; there are no hard and fast rules for success. Often green procurement efforts to date have been initiated without the benefit of a strategy, and without the involvement of purchasing expertise. As a result of communication tunnels, the first barrier, it means that a green stream exists and a purchasing stream exists, without flowing together. The consequence of this divergence is that green policies for purchasing and their accompanying guidelines remain words on a page. No real value is added. Therefore to experience bricks and mortar level success, a better understanding of the commonalties between greening and purchasing process must be explored.
QUALITY MANAGEMENT ENABLES CONNECTIVITY BETWEEN GREEN PURCHASING AND PRODUCTIVITY
Quality management refers to the process of management recognizing that the only constant in this world is change, and making managing change as a core competency. While some people are adverse to change, it occurs daily, i.e. weather, wellness, and the flow of water. Change is a natural phenomenon. Quality management in this discussion is not synonymous with the adoption of ISO 9000, as many have adopted the international standard without ever embracing quality as a philosophy. In its simplest form, quality management is also referred to as 'Plan, Do, Check, Act' or the PDCA Cycle, which is taken from Deming's work. While W. Edwards Deming is credited as being the grandfather of quality management, it was Japanese willingness to embrace the idea and their subsequent hard work that proved the commercial and trade value of quality. There must have been the seeds of understanding even then of the application of quality to environment. Consider the nature reference in Professor Kaoru Ishikawa's fishbone diagram for determination of cause and effect, structure trees for problem analysis, flow diagrams, and stream-to-stream analysis. The existence of quality management can facilitate the adoption of environmental management standards and performance improvement because of similar terminology, concepts, tools and philosophies." -
Re: articles on the concept of sustainability
2005-11-11 18:20:00 UTC
Dear Jennifer:
The Asian Productivity Organization has developed a six step process to address sustainability. A policy related introduction to the idea is available on their website, google them and look a the Report to the WSSD in 2002 on this. The same report is available on a corporate website, if you google E2 Management Corporation and go the link on Green Productivity. IF this approach is of interest to you, APO just released two books on this, one a textbook called a Handbook on Green Productivity that walks adult learners through the process. The companion document is called Greening on the Go, which explains over 80 tools, techniques and concepts under the GP umbrella. The latter one is primarily geared to micro-enterprise. APO is selling the books, but will offer them on line when they are uploaded, I think for the effort of downloading.
Cheers
L. E. Johannson B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc., FRSA -
Re: Promoting Fuel Efficient Vehicles -- Strategies for programs
2005-11-07 13:40:42 UTC
Dear Doug:
The Greenfleet program in Australia has started to show some interesting results. When I first look at in about 2 years ago it appeared to have no real uptake. I was in New York recently and saw how financial incentives were being applied. There are bank loans I believe with preference rates being offered. Perhaps Van City would be interested in this as a local initiative.
L L. E. Johannson
B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc., FRSA -
Re: Waste Diversion at Provincial Parks
2005-11-01 15:14:57 UTC
Dear Elizabeth:
There are three things that sell consistently. Sports, sex and humor. Of the three humour seems to engender a higher recall. When combined with one or both - much greater success. Seems to be a focus on one and three might be a good idea. If you have ever seen the Don't Mess With Texas program, they managed to capture all three tastefully. Recall was high and so was the public's response. All at low cost. My suggestion is that you inspire a little community activity by hosting a contest in the park to promote campers to participate in creating the slogans they think will attract people. Make the prize a year pass? Along with a little publicity. We ran a kids video contest for ten years on conservative issues. We have a reservoir of extremely creative clips from kids that we are now digitizing and will be putting on the Internet. We are also working with a director to get funding for a documentary on the impact the contest had on the kids - we know some went on to much greater things.
Good luck
L. E. Johannson
B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc., FRSA -
Re: The Next Blue Box - A different Ontario persective
2005-10-30 14:50:28 UTC
Has the Blue Box been successful? Well, from the perspective of being an innovation whereby it has became a social norm supported by the first half of the bell curve, yes. It is true that we had the innovators and early adopters involved. I believe that it certainly earmarked the first broad based opportunity for individuals to participate in doing something positive for the environment whereas before it started the only social engagement process was to complain to someone (government, industry, peers). As an interesting early day case study for social engineering, it holds the attention of many. Jack McGinnis and many others worked diligently to get it kick started. Careers were made and jobs were lost in the development phase. But the Blue Box has hit a plateau. It has not got enough people involved consistently. There are still the laggards or late adopters who are NOT involved. And currently, the quality of material as output has dropped considerably. Part of this is poor management by those responsible for program design. Part of this is insufficient communication and education. Part of this is that we leave in an increasingly complicated world with decreasing amounts of free time. Current pressures to make the Blue Box do more than it was designed to do are driving the costs up, the end product quality down, and we need to do something to get it off its current plateau. There are a number of people and quite a few industries, very interested to determine how its value as a social norm can be leveraged to counter its current downward trend. There are a number of industries too that are very concerned that the public's faith in the Blue Box is protected even at a financial premium until they can sort out the 'management' problems with it. I find it interesting that some industry players would do that. The question is now can we get it off its plateau, enhance the quality of materials and increase the quantities captured? How do we have to rethink the design? What incentives are needed to get late adopters and laggards involved? I am far less interested in penalty approaches to stir late adopters and laggards as I do not believe we have put enough effort into the opportunity side of the equation. I am interested in the thoughts of others to address the slow pokes.
L. E. Johannson B.E.S., (Hons) M.Sc.,
FRSA Ontario
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