Pinpointing waste helps companies save money

(The Edmond Sun, Okla. Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Mar. 21--EDMOND -- Environmental sustainability will not succeed without business and industry, said Dianne Wilkins, Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality pollution prevention program manager.

Wilkins spoke Friday morning at the eighth annual conference of the Oklahoma Sustainability Network presented at the University of Central Oklahoma. Several presentations were offered during the event, including how officials and residents in Greensburg, Kan., have rebuilt using green initiatives after their town was destroyed by a tornado.

Lean manufacturing makes business by saving money and environmental sense by saving time, increasing productivity and reducing wasteful pollution, said Kurt Middelkoop of the University of Texas at Arlington. He works with the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center in partnership with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Its function is to assist manufacturers in the state to become more competitive.

"Pollution prevention is a way of looking at things differently; it's a paradigm shift," Wilkins said. "And you look at not just managing waste but looking at the source of your waste and trying to figure out how to reduce it," Wilkins said.

Not having to recycle by not generating waste is the point of pollution prevention, Middelkoop said. Not having to generate waste leads to using a green product instead of a non-green product, he said. This could be a water-base solvent instead of a chemical-base solvent, he continued.

"What we're teaching manufacturers is that when you make money, if you're going to be here 10 years from now, you have to be addressing environmental issues," Middelkoop said.

He said if manufacturers are not lean if they don't see their product flowing from the beginning of the process. Manufactured materials should be shipped out and not stored, Middelkoop said.

"That's the whole model of people like Toyota. They bring things in. It's all about timing so things flow," he said. This applies to any type of business, Wilkins added.

People who teach lean opportunities across the U.S. are being taught about environmental opportunities, he said. Manufacturers have historically not focused on their lighting and facility's air conditioning as a way to save money.

He quoted Toyota's definition of waste: "It's anything other than the minimum amount of equipment, the minimum amount of materials, parts, space and workers' time that are absolutely necessary to add value to the product." Extra inventory causes the need for a bigger facility and more energy consuming lights, Middelkoop said of a reason for eliminating over producing. Excessive lights in a building is a waste the customer is not willing to pay a manufacturer, he said.

"When you over-produce, you end up generating pollution," he said. "If you can reduce your inventory ... you can actually reduce in a manufacturer the hazardous waste." TO LEARN MORE about sustainability, go to www.oksustainability.com.

To see more of The Edmond Sun or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.edmondsun.com/.

Copyright (c) 2009, The Edmond Sun, Okla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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