Why Green is Green

October 2009 Sun Inner Circle Newsletter Simulation on the rise This issue's letter from Sun CIO Bob Worrall Share: Inner Circle Subscriber Center Get the content that meets your interests and needs. » Join now Print-friendly Page Contact Sun

Back in 2006, Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, mounted a stage in Boca Raton, Florida and declared, in the process of kicking off GE’s eco initiatives, that “green is green.” This simple statement, which has become something of a motto for GE, recognizes that eco-efficiency makes sense from a business perspective as well as an environmental perspective. What Immelt meant was that there’s real money to be made by being environmentally responsible.

But is it true, or was it just a slogan? And if green is green, what’s the best way to identify and act upon opportunities to produce eco-effective products and services?

Flip through any newspaper or magazine and you’ll see that the obsession with “green” isn’t just a passing fad. The News section will have articles about the opening of a local recycling center or a new battle over eco legislation. The Sports section will include articles about new eco-friendly packaging for hydration products and more energy-efficient lighting at stadiums. The Style section will discuss the latest green fashions featuring clothing made from bamboo or hemp. The Home section will provide pointers about cutting the power consumption of appliances. And the Business section will be filled with articles about the latest take-back legislation, or sales projections for the Smart Car.

The market for eco-effective product is here

What this means for today’s enterprise is that the market for eco-effective products is here; consumer demand for eco-effective products is real; and efforts that emphasize eco-effective design are being rewarded by the marketplace.

It’s not just the commercial success of the Toyota Prius and the compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) that’s driving the focus on eco-efficient product design. GE’s own revenue for eco-focused products surged past $12 billion within a year of its “Ecomagination” campaign, and the value of its order backlog rose to $50 billion. Similarly, Wal-Mart Stores has increased efficiency and lowered costs by reducing product packaging throughout its supply chain. Boeing discovered that the efficiency advantage of its new 787 Dreamliner not only brings savings today, but additional cost efficiencies tomorrow. At Sun, we’ve seen the “green is green” advantage in increased sales of our energy-efficient servers. And the list goes on.

One of the best examples is perhaps one of the most surprising: Interface, Inc., a leading carpet manufacturer in the United States. Back in 1994 Interface launched a total overhaul of its operations centered around environmental sustainability. It began measuring and monitoring every aspect of its environmental impact and also that of its suppliers. It set out very specific goals and objectives, both from a business perspective and an environmental perspective. And the results have been phenomenal. Interface cut total waste sent to landfills by more than 66 percent; they reduced total energy used at carpet manufacturing facilities by 45 percent; they reduced GHG emissions by 82 percent when you include improvements in process efficiencies plus the use of credits. And in the process they saved more than $370 million.

In short, businesses of all types and sizes are clearly eager to transform green into green. But that doesn’t mean a project will sail through your company’s approval and budgeting processes simply because it’s eco-friendly. From the company’s point of view, all product decisions are still about money. And that means now more than ever, engineers and product design teams need to be specific about how their projects will solve customer problems, contribute revenue, and create competitive advantages.

Within the next few years, virtually every new product or service will include environmental considerations as part of its core design specifications. Product engineers will need to respond to the issues, laws, and requirements for eco-responsible products and services — and be able to take advantage of the opportunities that eco-responsible products represent.

Engineering for eco efficiency

Corporations are recognizing that environmental responsibility and fiscal responsibility are not mutually exclusive — in fact, they can mesh well. And that’s great for engineers who want to improve the eco-effectiveness of a product or process. The question is how best to go about it.

It can be next to impossible to identify and measure the full range of environmental impacts of a single product or service, let alone determine priorities for improving environmental performance. The issues include:

• Determining the carbon footprint of a product or service
• Understanding the impact of different sources of electricity
• Knowing which chemicals and materials are desirable — and which should be avoided
• Maximizing the recyclability and minimizing the waste of a product
• Determining the fresh-water footprint of a product or service

Because of all of these challenges, engineers need a framework for thinking through the impacts and tradeoffs of more responsible design. Since they have neither the time nor the data to measure and model everything, this framework must rely on strategies for estimation, prioritization, and focused measuring and modeling within constrained situations.

In their recently published book, Citizen Engineer, Sun executives David Douglas and Greg Papadopoulos present a pragmatic approach to product lifecycle analysis to help engineers understand the overall environmental impacts of the products they design. The book walks them through a detailed step by step analysis of this lifecycle. A quick summary of the recommended guidelines for setting priorities, requirements and goals include:

• Making sure your product or service will meet all applicable environmental laws for every country, state, and province where you plan to offer it
• Placing a high priority on environmental features that will cut costs or increase market appeal for your product or service
• Placing a high priority on minimizing the effect of any environmental features that are required but will not have a negative business impact
• Placing a high priority on environmental features that will help your company meet its overall environmental goals
• Understanding the largest impacts of your product or service and making sure you have a plan to decrease the impact steadily over time
• Being on the lookout for low-hanging fruit — opportunities to make changes that have a positive business impact, no matter how small they are

Beware of green-washing

We’re all familiar with the over-the-top eco claims and bogus green initiatives that constitute green-washing. Green-washing creates serious problems for eco-engineering because it makes it hard for anyone to tell which ideas are genuinely eco-effective and which are not. That means legitimate ideas are not taken seriously and in many cases promising projects are not funded. Green-washing also contributes to “green noise,” information overload that results in environmental claims being uniformly dismissed as hype or PR.

The way product teams can counteract green-washing and green noise is to provide hard data through measurements and benchmarks. The EPA’s fuel-efficiency ratings are one example — a miles-per-gallon rating for “city” and “highway” driving. They give you a basis for determining how one car’s gas efficiency compares with another’s, and you can quantify the benefits based on your own driving habits. These benchmarks have been slow to emerge in the world of electronic devices, but we’re seeing progress now with eco-rating schemes such as Energy Star, EPEAT, 80 Plus, and Climate Savers Computing.

A new era of innovation — and profitability

There are plenty of examples of how social and environmental responsibility drives economics and how that in turn drives new innovations. However, social responsibility is about more than pure economics, and engineering is about more than filling market needs.

Today, product design teams and engineers are not merely catering to the tastes and demands of consumers; they are also influencing and guiding the attitudes and preferences of the society and creating new capabilities. This is the era that Douglas and Papadopoulos refer to as the advent of the “citizen engineer.” The role of the engineer is broader than ever, with engineers serving as a true connection point between science and society.

“There is a level of excitement and passion in the engineering community today that I have not seen in decades,” said Papadopoulos. “It’s not limited to the young or to recent engineering school graduates; it’s a surge of energy among engineers of all types and in all parts of the world. And it stems from the recognition that today there is a unique opportunity to make things that not only make money but that also make a real difference in our environment and in our society.”