Sustainability Programs for Your Business

A few years ago, I attended a webinar hosted by Flexcon Corporation, which discussed their sustainability program. For those of you not familiar with Flexcon, Flexcon supplies adhesive films to the label industry. They have grown to a point where they have become every bit if not better than 3M.

The first portion of the webinar was hosted by Mr. Darwin Irish, who provided hands on examples on how Flexcon implemented their own sustainability program. Here are the steps that will help you implement a sustainability program across your organization:

Develop a baseline for tracking

Look at current usage of emissions, gas, energy, supplied, etc.

Look at what you are doing currently

Are there waste reduction programs in place? Recycling or other conservation efforts?

Develop a systematic approach to becoming more efficient through waste elimination

Where and how can we cut waste?

Education and open communication with employees

This involves generating new ideas for future sustainability and gets everyone in the organization on board. Asking employees for their suggestions and ideas, helps get everyone on the same page.

By implementing the above steps, Flexcon enhanced their sustainability via Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Here are some examples where they conserved resources:

  • Reduced cleaning and paper products by approximately 20%.
  • Decreased electricity usage 16% since 2004 by installing motion sensors and upgrading electrical systems.
  • Decreased natural gas by 40% by installing thermal oxidizers.
  • Plastic Pallet reuse program—saved 27,000 pallets per year by having pallets returned for reuse.

As you can see, implementing a program for reducing, reusing, and recycling in your company is not rocket science—but it does require everyone in the organization to be on board. Where can resources be conserved in your company?

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