by Mary Ann Mcgivern

Created on: November 13, 2009

Companies are learning how to leave a lighter impact on the planet. And they are learning that a lighter impact has its benefits. The basic problem is waste, and reducing waste always improves profit.

INDUSTRIAL WASTE
Industrial waste is the source of enormous pollution and environmental degradation. Pollutants are dumped into rivers. Mining debris is piled behind earthen dams. Nuclear tailings are scattered around both mining and refining sites. Fossil fuels are burned and the emissions clog our air and our lungs. It is easy to make a list like this.

It is harder to account for the waste. In fact, business accounting does not account for it. Businesses are not charged for river or land or air clean-up. And generally, the businesses don't even track their own chemical waste, much less worker illnesses like black lung and radiation sickness caused by the waste until the government forces a settlement.

ACCOUNTING AS A SOLUTION TO INDUSTRIAL WASTE
There are a number of proposals to change accounting practices so that waste and pollution are charged on the company books. This would be an accounting charge, not a tax, though no doubt there is fear it might prove the basis for a tax; but simply recording the cost of waste on the company books would promote new thinking about the costs of waste and reducing it.

ELECTRONICS WASTE
Televisions, batteries, computer screens and cell phones are leaking heavy metals and acids into landfills. Many of these products are engineered to be obsolescent. Cell phones have incompatible chargers and batteries.

THE REUSE AND COMPATIBILITY SOLUTIONS
Electronic parts can be reused. More parts and batteries can be designed for reuse.
The European Union recently required that cell phone chargers be compatible. Electronics manufacturers have lost sight of the principle of interchangeable parts. Compatible cords, batteries, monitors, keyboards, etc., would cost less to produce, simplify inventory control, and lessen the burden on the planet.

ENERGY WASTE - A SOLUTION IN THE MAKING
Many companies have figured out that wasted energy is dollars leaking out the windows and doors. They do production runs at utility off peak times. They experiment with staggered shifts, work from home shared office space and flexible manufacturing agreements with other companies. But most haven't installed windmills yet, or roof gardens or the newest insulating glass. The changes are slow, but they are real.

FOOD WASTE
All the hunger in the world not withstanding, about 20% of food is wasted. Some is left unharvested in fields. Animals die of disease and wounds in feed lots and cages. Spillage occurs in shipping. Grocers toss a lot. Consumers round out the waste, letting unused food rot in the refrigerator.

THE LOCAL SOLUTION
E.F. Schumacher wrote Small Is Beautiful in 1973. Its ideas still hold true. Local food production is far more efficient than agribusiness harvest and delivery. It has the additional benefit of reducing the burden of luxury production on land and people in distant lands. It addresses only one part of the problem, but it is a beginning.

SHODDY MERCHANDISE AND THE CONSUMER SOLUTION
Shoddy products infuriate consumers, but they sell because they are cheap - and the customer hopes this time the item won't break. It will require a reorganization of consumer society to reject low-quality items so that companies stop making them. But such a reorganization and reorientation of human values is what it will take for companies to leave a lighter impact on our planet.

Learn more about this author, Mary Ann Mcgivern.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.