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Is plastic on your mind?
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Date
Even before The Graduate, and Mr. McGuire’s one word advice to Benjamin, “plastics”, plastics were already becoming a material of choice for so many products. Like other “miracle” products, materials and solutions,at times there is little consideration for the long term effects. In the excitement of the miracle, lost is the question that we, in sustainability, are always asking; “to what degree are you considering the sustainability factors that affects these products (projects) during the entire project lifecycle and beyond” (its greenality). The problem is that the urgency to evaluate those long term effects (beyond the project life cycle when the product is in use) is overshadowed by the urgency to execute on the idea. The connection to projects is that projects are where those ideas become reality.
The urgency became a reality in a recent report from one of our favorite sustainability websites, Green Biz, www.greenbiz.com, “Plastics cost the environment $75 billion each year” by Danny Bradbury. The report is about the cost to the environment from consumer goods companies through their use of plastics. The article is based a report "Valuing plastic". Vauling Plastic is a report from the Plastic Disclosure Project, a joint U.N. Environment Programme with natural capital analysts Trucost. It is an evaluation of the environmental and social impact of plastics used by businesses. The interesting piece, to me, is that It also assesses the financial cost to companies were they to be financially responsible for their plastics usage. In other words, if these companies truly considered the greenality of their products, projects and processes, perhaps an additional $75 billion could be added to the bottom line (profits).
In effect, the reports shows, the food industry accounted for 23% of the financial cost with the soft drink industry a distant second with 12% of the costs. Further, environmental considerations include: toxicity of the plastics, fouling land usage, causing the death of some animals (6-pack holders straggling water fowl for instance), etc. According to Andrew Russell, the director of the Plastic Disclosure Project, "Avoiding plastic entering the environment at all will avoid a lot of them (the issues). Making sure there is a very high percentage of recycled content in the product or packaging, and making sure the plastic is recycled at the end of its life (my emphasis), all have enormous favorable impact."
So, what can we do, as project managers, to help to alleviate or at least mitigate this problem and, by the way, add to your organization’s bottom line? We certainly can make recommendations, not only as PMs, but as members of the organization. One of the major issues we deal with is transparency. Real transparency comes from communications, and we are communicators. Making people aware of plastic content of products, recyclability, use of recyclable materials, facilitates transparency. According to the report, only about ½ of the companies assessed, report any quantitative data on plastics usage. That is not transparency.
One of the obvious choices is that we should recommend that the plastics we use are recyclable, reusable and that the materials we use in the production have a significant content from recycled material. Plastics can be costly in natural capital, “the limited stock of Earth’s natural resources that humans depend on for our prosperity, security and well-being — including things such as clean air and water.” (http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/09/09/who-are-leaders-natural-capital). To preserve both the natural capital and the organization’s bottom line, one word, plastics.
Posted
by
Dave Shirley
on: July 10, 2014 07:09 AM |
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