Project Management

Weaving Your Way to Sustainability

From the People, Planet, Profits & Projects Blog
by ,

About this Blog

RSS

View Posts By:

Richard Maltzman
Dave Shirley

Recent Posts

Saving the Sahel (Part 1)

You Can't Get They-ah From Hee-yah

Floating an idea into reality: the other side of the AI Project Paradox

The Environment of the Built Environment: an AI Paradox

Is plastic on your mind?

Categories

6th, 6th Edfition, 6th Edition PMBOK, 7th Edition, 7th Edition PMBOK, 8th Edition PMBOK, 8th Edition PMBOK Guide, Activism, actuarial, actuary, adapt, addition by subtraction, Africa, africa, agriculture, airforce, ajaita, Alaska, amazon, analogous, analytics, ancient, and more power, antarctica, anti-science, apple, apps, architecture, arctic, arrakis, Artificial Intelligence, asch paradigm, Assistant, asthma, astronomy, automobile, automotive, autonomous cars, b, bankhar, Banksy Crypto, basalt, baseball, bats, batter, beauty products, benefit, benefits, Benefits Realization, beyond epica, biases, bicycle, big data, big dfata, big dig, bike, biodiversity, biomedicine, birdhouse, blockchain, blood, blue blood, blue trees, bluefin, bluefin tuna, book review, boston, boston university, Boyce, Brazil, brazil, Breakdown Structures, BS, building, buildings, built environment, built environment, bumblebee, cake, capacitor, car, Carbon, carbon, carbon capture, carbon negative, carbon neutral, carbon pool, carbon sequestration, carbonate, careers, CEO, ChatGPT, chatGPT, chatgpt, chatgpt, chess, China, china, chopsticks, citrus, cli-fi, climate, climate change, climate resilience, climeworks, Clumsy, CO2, co2, CO2 Utilization, coalition, cobalt, coffee pods, cognition, cognitive, Collabortion, colombia, concrete, Conflict, construction 5.0, cool projects xyloscope, cooling, coral, corn, cost of good quality, cost of poor quality, cost of quality, crazy, criticism of project management, cryptocurrency, CSR, csr, data, data analytics, data privacy, datacenter, dataset, death spiral, Decision Making, decomposition, Defense and Climate, definition of a project, deforestation, dependencies, dependency, desert, DIKW, dikw, dimopoulos, disposal, dna, DOD, dogs, dolphins, dream, drilling, drink, dune, dune, dutch, early start, earth, eatlocal, eco-tourism, ecological, economic, economics, EKC, electric grid, electricity, electronics, elysis, embodied carbon, emerging technologies, empower, Energy, energy efficiency, environmental degradation, escalate, escalation, ESG, extreme weather, fallacy, FARC, farming, finance, fish, fish brains, fishing, fix, fixing the earth, flint water, Flint Water Supply, flood, flooding, Food supply chain, food waste, forest, forest for the trees, forestation, forrestgump, frank herbert, Fruitcake, fungus, fusion, Galvao, garage, gas, gasoline, geese, gender equality, gender partnerships, generational differences, Generative AI, gladwell, gold, Goodness, google, Government, GPT, great pacific garbage patch, green, green building, green buildings, green energy, green iguana, green project, green project management, greening, guest post, gyre, harkonnen, Harvesting Benefits, hawasina, hedgehogs, heursitics, historical data, hlb, holitsic, holland, horseshoe crab, human-caused climate change, hydrogen, hydrology, ice, iceland, ignition, iguana, imagery, impact, india, inequality, information, initiatives, injection, insurance, intelligence, interacting risk, internal combustion engine, invasive species, investment, isomer, issue escalation, issues, ITER, jobs, Jupiter, justification, kids, kill point, knowledge, koch brothers, Kuznets, laboratory, LAL, landscape mode, lapampa, launch, LCA, Leadership, Leadership, life cycle analyses, life cycle analysis, lifecycle, Linkedin, liquid, lizard, local, long term, long-term, long-term thinking, look up, loud, maintenance, maker, makermovement, malcolm gladwell, management, marathon, marine biology, market, mars, Martin Luther King, mean, megawatt, MeHg, melting, mercury, metal, Microgrid, microplastics, migration, military, millennial, mindset, minerals, mission, mitigate, MLK, mongolia, museum, museum of london, nature, nematodes, net gain, Net Project Success Score, net zero, netherlands, network, New book, New Jersey, New Practitioners, new york, NFT, nitrogen, noise, noreaster, norway, nova, NPSS, NREL, ocean, ocean cleanup, ocean life, oil rig, oil rigs, oklahoma, oman, only murders in the building, opportunity, overall risk, oxygen, packaging, pareto, PBS, permafrost, persistence, peru, Pharmaceutical, planet, planet.com, planning, plant, plasma, plastic, playground, pm, pm education, pmbok, pmbok guide, pmnetwork, PMXPO-2018, podcast, pollutants, pollution, poop, poor, portfolio, power, power skills, privacy, privacy concerns, professors, program, Program Management, project, project leader, project leadership, project management, project management 3.0, project on fire, project progress, Project Success, project success, projecticity, projectleadership, projectmanagement, projects, psychology, pulse of the profession, purple bacteria, purpose, quiet, rainforest, rationale, reef, refugees, renewable, renewables, Repair, repair, repeatable process, repeatable processes, repurpose, research, resource breakdown strucuture, Resource Management, reversing climate change, revisionist history, rich, rigs2reefs, ripe, risk, risk avoidance, Risk Management, risk mitigation, risk response, risk responses, river, robots, rocks, rules of thumb, rural, rural India, russia, Sarcasm/Irony, satellite, saudi, schedule, sci-fi, Science, science, science-fiction, scientific american, screaming monkeys, sea, sea life, Sea-Level Rise, sea-level rise, seagreens, seawall, seawater, seawater temperature, seaweed. beat;es. farming, secondary risk, selena gomez, sequestration, shipping, skyscraper, SLR, smart cities, smart city, smelting, social, social pressure, soil, solar, solar panels, solar perovkites, solar saheli, sonic, sponge cities, SRI, stage-gate, stagegate, stakeholder, stakeholder management, steward, stewardship, storage, strategy, stupid, success, suffer, sulphur, sunk cost, supercapacitor, supply chain, survey, Sustainability, sustainability, Sustainable Investing, Sustainable Tourism, sybiosis, symbiosis, system 03, TBL, temperature, terraform, terraforming, test, threat, threats, totem, touchscreen, tour, tower, Trains, transparency, transportation, trash, tree, tree species, trees, trillion, triple bottom line, triple constraint, truth to power, UMass, us army corps of engineers, USDA, vacuum, value, venus, vision, voice, voltage optimization, vw scandal, washing machine, waste, wastewater, water, we mean business, whales, Whirlpool, wind, wisdom, women, Women in Project Management, wood wide web, woonerf, Work Breakdown Structures (WBS), world breakdown structure, worms, xian, xylotron, Yale

Date

linkedin twitter facebook Request to reuse this  


There are many projects that can lead to a more sustainable product.  I received a rug the other day from Pottery Barn.  We were looking for a sustainable product and this rug fills the bill.  It originates from Obeetee, a company founded on sustainable principles.  Shortly after World War I, a couple of British entrepreneurs decided to create an enterprise by partnering with group of local artisans in the rug making area of Uttar Pradesh, India.  Those artisans had a tradition of weaving high quality rugs for centuries.  But what makes it sustainable?

One thing that they do is vertical integration.  The company works directly with over 15,000 weavers so that the loom owners have close ties to the factory.  Those close ties allow for mutually beneficial relationship to form.  That relationship resulted in the “coveted” SA8000: 2001 Certification for Social Accountability which examines 8 core elements including; worker health and safety, working hours, child labor, forced labor, discrimination, freedom of association and collective bargaining, wages and discipline. 

Additionally Obeetee carpets are made with safe dyes and chemicals and “is the first in the industry to set up water effluent treatment plants and air pollution control systems.”  They majority of their power is generated using gas derived from biomass.  It is eco-friendly way to recover heat and power from the biomass and is utilized to run the power turbines.  Obeetee contributes to surrounding communities by planting trees and developing parks.  Even though the hiring age in India for labor is 14 years old, Obeetee’s hiring standards are a minimum of 16 years old. 

Looking at the labeling on the rug pad we also purchased at the same time from Pottery Barn, it states that it is “made from recycled polyester and nylon needle punched fibers, attached to a pad of natural and synthetic rubber.”  It also states that it is “made from recycled materials that are safe to use on all types of floors.”   

It is always interesting to find a company, in potentially a fossil fuel intensive industry, carpeting, and seeing that the projects along the way have lead to a very sustainable company.  One that we’ve mentioned before is Interface Global, “the worldwide leader in design, production and sales of environmentally-responsible modular carpet for the commercial, institutional, and residential markets, and a leading designer and manufacturer of commercial broadloom.”  Global Interface intends to be 100% sustainable by the year 2020. 

It is worth noting that whatever the product of your enterprise may be, it will fall somewhere in the “green spectrum," green by intent to green in general, from developing a wind farm to putting out a new software release. Defined in Green Project Management, greenality “is the “degree to which an organization has considered environmental (green) factors that affect its projects during the entire project life cycle and beyond.”  Obeetee has certainly done that from the beginning.


Posted by Dave Shirley on: April 13, 2012 09:15 AM | Permalink

Comments (0)

Please login or join to subscribe to this item


Please Login/Register to leave a comment.

ADVERTISEMENTS

Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like there's nobody watching.

ADVERTISEMENT

Sponsors