Kate Bachman Editor Green Manufacturer

Chasing the elusive definition of green

Early in the formative period of this magazine, it became apparent that the green industry, still in its infancy, is in the throes of defining and measuring itself. Survey respondents requested that we sort fact from fiction; weed out the greenwashed from the truly green.

So began the labyrinth of dizzying debate.

How do you define a green cleaner? What characterizes a green lubricant? If a cleaner is biobased but cannot be disposed down a drain, is it green? If a lubricant can’t be drain-disposed but can be made into biodiesel, then is it green? If a lubricant is biobased and biodegradable but was grown using hazardous fertilizers and insecticides, is it green? What if a solution is biobased, drain-disposable, grown organically and locally, contains 0 percent hazardous chemicals, is recirculated, and then delivered by bicycle, but is not effective at its intended purpose and therefore the material it’s intended to lubricate or clean deteriorates and must be discarded before its intended life cycle?

The article “7 ways to manage energy consumption for higher profitability (p. 32) devotes a fair amount of discussion to defining and measuring energy usage. “Before you can begin to manage the energy consumption in your facility, you first have to gain insights into what your energy usage and quality patterns are,” the authors state. “After all, you cannot manage what you cannot see.”

Wal-Mart, that retail giant evoking admiration or disdain, has been in the process of developing a “sustainability index” to define and measure the sustainability of the products it sells. The index is intended to track how sustainably a product has been produced, from cradle to shelf space. It’s a daunting task. Wal-Mart has been at it for a while.

Buildings Gain Ground

One area in which a great deal of progress has been made is the buildings/facilities sector. The nonprofit agency, U.S. Green Building Council, (USGBC) has done a remarkable job of defining and measuring sustainability in buildings through its certification program, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®).

Soon after it formed in 1993, USGBC members concluded that the sustainable building industry needed a system to define and measure “green buildings,” the agency’s literature states. Its LEED rating system and certification has become the definitive standard for what constitutes a green building in design, construction, and operation.

The system evaluates environmental performance from a whole-building perspective over a building’s life cycle. Points, or credits, are weighted and assigned to each achieved goal. When the accumulated credits reach a prescribed total, the building’s owners can herald its certification level status.

As remarkable as its meteoric progress is that the LEED green building rating system is voluntary, consensus-based, and market-driven. According to the agency, more than 35,000 projects are currently working to achieve LEED certification.

(Cap-and-trade proponents, take note.)

The agency recently has stretched into the operations of existing buildings, striving to set some standards and form some goals.

Still, many questions about manufacturing equipment and operations remain unresolved. Where are the Energy Star ratings for laser cutters? What is a commendable renewable-energy standard for a building? What percentage of waste reuse, recovery, or recycling is deserving of a silver, gold, or platinum LEED status?

Too, critics say some of the definitions and measurements have gone too far, requiring a team of algorithm-equipped geeks to calculate the credit requirements (see “Following LEED’s lead for building materials,” p. 38).

Define and Measure Draws the Line in the Sand

Still, defining and measuring is the starting line for setting improvement goals. It marks the beginning of the path so manufacturers can, at least, look back and see how far they’ve come—and how far they have to go.

Green Manufacturer strives to be the source of definitions, measurements, benchmarking, and inspiration for manufacturers pursuing their own green paths.

Kate Bachman
Editor
Green Manufacturer

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kateb@greenmanufacturer.net

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