Environmentally Profitable

lemmingEffect writes: "Came across this NYT article about how many companies are finding unexpected cost-savings for using more environmentally-friendly manufacturing processes and materials. Kinda like getting paid to clean your room--sure would have made me happier as a kid. =)"

Comments

Well, duh

[YIAAL]

As long as you don't go beyond what technology can reasonably accomplish, environmentally friendly processes are usually going to be more efficient. And more efficient processes are usually going to be cheaper, at least over the long term.

The problem is when you try to get too far ahead of existing technology. Then you wind up with kludged-together stuff that doesn't work right. A good example is the too-early adoption of electronic engine controls by Detroit in the 1970s. In principle, it was a great idea. In practice, the technology wasn't robust enough yet, and U.S. cars suffered reliability problems for years as a result.

(They're still behind Japanese and German cars, but not by much -- in fact, a crappy Chevy today is considerably more reliable than the "bulletproof" Toyotas of the late '80s.)

Re:Well, duh

[mrseth]

I was a GM dealership automotive technician for many years and I worked my way through college in an independent garage for 4 years. I can tell you that the problems with cars manufacutered by the Big Three had nothing to do with technology and everything due to the fact that the bean counters seemed to be in control of the engineering department. The Japanese imports had to conform to the same emissions standards as their American counterparts yet suffered none of the reliability problems. For instance, the materials used in the American cars were absolutely inferior. After about 2-3 years the old barrel-type coolant sensor connector on a GM car would crumble in your hands. My wife's 1988 Celica's coolant sensor connector, and for that matter the vacuum hoses, radiator hoses, and many other platic parts that are subject to strain and engine heat are still original equipment and in seemingly good condition after 188,000 Mi. The American counterparts would all tend to be brittle and/or broken at this age and mileage. Another example is gasket design and material. The Japanese had gone to rubber/neoprene type gaskets for things like valve/cam covers where the US cars were still using cheap cork or RTV compound. For that matter the Japanese cam covers (of course the Japs had OHC engines that were also much more advanced than the rewarmed 1950's and 1960's OHV relics that GM was using) themselves were molded aluminum as opposed to the cheap American stamped steel valve covers that would bend as you tried to pry loose the leaking RTV (Actually, I got really good at sealing these things, but it is an art). These problems also were present in the fuel systems, the electronics, the ignition systems, etc. So really this has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with underengineering and putting profit above product quality.

Scratching the Surface

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a good step in the right direction, the maximizing of profit at all other costs is terrible. Still we have a long way to go, in my local community a battery plant is run with a bare minimum staff so that the EPA will not do a massive inspection after the plant closes. They moved operations to mexico and decided it was cheaper to keep the plant open with a skeleton crew than to do the cleanup costs involved :-(

"Contact with my own species has always disappointed me. Solitude gives me a freedom of mind and an independence of action." -Captain Nemo

Obligatory Non-reg Link

[suss]

Link that doesn't need an account, etc, etc.

WTF is with this "Lameness filter encountered.? It disappeared as soon as i put this text below the link...

Well...

[Sarcasmooo!]

Too bad that, in most cases, companies don't clean themselves up; they convince local government to establish c o r p o r a t e 'wealthfare' programs that force the public's tax money to foot the bill for whatever maintenance and equipment is needed to reach standards set by environmental regulations.

Re:Well...

[Sagarian]

While I don't aim to excuse the behavior of corporations using public money to foot the bill, the bottom line is that someone has to foot it.

You can pay for it through higher product prices or higher taxes. While it would be more economically efficient to have consumers foot the bill for the resources consumed and wasted by the products they purchase, at least the environmental efficiences claimed by this NYT article are in fact being realized. And once realized to be profitable, such practices are more likely to be adopted.

The ultimate reality, in my mind, is that many environmental regulations are passed without regard to their economic impact (would you pay 10x the cost for water with 5x lest arsenic in it, when current levels are KNOWN to be safe?).

Thus, I believe it requires public and private cooperation to realize efficient ways to comply with environmental regulations.

Perhaps the best way would be to treat compliance expenses as research projects in cases where affordable methods are not known for compliance, in which the results (such as the practices mentioned in the NYT article) would be 'open source' published as best practices for compliance, and then future funds cut accordingly as the cost uncertainty is eliminated.

It might help to view this as a choice between funneling public funds to develop best practices which are viable or even profitable, versus hiring a bunch of regulators to monitor compliance (and how the heck do you set a fine when the costs of compliance are not well understood? This invites further gaming inefficienies).

Either requires public money. I for one am willing to invest my tax dollars to helping companies develop efficient compliance mechanisms, as long as those results are open-sourced.

What people ought to realize...

[rneches]

Pollution is waste. Waste is inefficency. Inefficency is lost profit. Ergo, it is cheaper to be cleaner. This applies to everything from engines to PCB manufacturing.

In the late 60's and early 70's, the auto industry tried to prevent or forstall the imposition of pollution controlls by insisting that cleaner engines would be less efficent, and that it would be impossible to actually improve their engine technology. The same year that GM and Ford vehigles took a huge penalty in gas milage and performace because the companies were forced to install catalytic converters, Honda introduced a car that met the pollution restrictions without a converter and with excellent gas mileage and reasonable performace for its displacement. But despite the facts, the result of this public relations temper-tantrum is that ever since, enviornmentalism has been linked with sacrifices in prosperity. This is evident in Bush's energy plan, and the US reluctance to cut CO2 emissions.

It has everything to do with corporate (and occasionally individual) resentment at being told what to do. It has nothing to do with the realities of the industries in question. The association of concervation with decreased prosperity is classic FUD.

It's really sad that this realization is news, but I'm glad a few people are finally waking up to it.

Re:What people ought to realize...

[dragons_flight]

Pollution is waste. Waste is inefficency. Inefficency is lost profit. Ergo, it is cheaper to be cleaner.

Sometimes waste is just waste.

For instance mining, I want the silver and it might turn out to be cheaper to scoop out the ore, remove the silver and dump the rest of the dirt back in the ground.

Or how about processed corn? I buy lots of corn on the cob, do my thing, and end up with bags of corn and lots of cob. What do I do with the cobs? Perhaps they make a good fuel, or can be ground up for animal feed, or maybe I can press them together to make building material. Who knows? But whatever I want to do with them, the public has to be willing to pay me more than the cost to process them - the cost of throwing the away. If I would take a lesser hit by throwing away the cobs then that's what makes good economic sense for me.

Looking at nature, there are lots of niche markets. Plants can store chemical energy efficiently so long as they don't expend too much energy in daily life. Animals by contrast show that for a highly mobile lifestyle it's more efficent to discard lots of waste that is too energy costly to reprocess compared with the abundance of food their mobility gives them access to. By contrast algae, fungus, etc breakdown that waste because they aren't mobile enough to find better resaources for them. Of course some organisms do things the way they do because they've never evolved a better method, but natural selection suggests that their place in nature will be close to the most efficient they can be with what they've got.

Technology makes new uses for things and makes reclaiming raw materials more cost effective, but it doesn't make sense for the producer until it is cost effective. If we don't like pollution then one solution is to charge the polluters for dumping stuff into the environment, because then their costs for disposal may exceed the costs of reclaimation or alternative use. Or we might subsidize other solutions so they become less costly than dumping.

Efficiency can be equivalent to cost effective, but it doesn't have to be in all processes and markets.

Re:What people ought to realize...

[FFFish]

Keeping in mind, of course, that there are short-term cost efficiencies, and long-term cost efficiencies.

Throwing away your corn cobs may be short-term cost effective. In the long term, though (and especially if you're a big corn-cobbing industry) it's going to become costly as landfills become glutted, transport costs rise, etc.

Installing a power plant that runs on cob fuel might be short-term expensive, but perhaps over the long term it would pay for itself several times over.

Short-term pain for long-term gain? Long-term pain for short-term gain?

It's a balancing act. Pros and cons on every issue.

That all expounded on, I'll conclude with my opinion: in the past, and particularly in the recent past, the emphasis has been on very-short-term gain.

Executives are being paid extravagantly for short-term performance, and are thus making the most immediately-profitable, shortest-term, biggest-payback decisions.

This needs to change. Instead of paying them ten million dollars in bonuses for their performance in the immediate past year, delay it until they've proven for a decade or two that their earlier decisions were the best decisions.

We'll end up with financially healthy companies that have high-quality long-term planning, that don't take the easy way out because it's cheapest *right now*, and that will provide jobs for the next generation.

Plus, my portfolio will probably be happier. :)

Re:What people ought to realize...

[ansible]

The key thing (with either corn or silver) is that there are end products in the process that have a consistent quality.

Anytime you're generating a large mass of something (like corn cobs) that has a consistent quality to them, there is potential to use it for something else.

If you take this potential raw material, and just throw it in the ground (or burn it), you're wasting the energy used to refine it. Sure, that energy was earmarked for refining the pricipal product (corn or silver), but as a result of that process you have also refined another potential product (corn cobs, or whatever is left of the silver ore). It usually just takes a little cleverness and effort to put this other raw material to good use too.

Enviromentalism will only become more profitable.

[MongooseCN]

The key factor that everyone misses is that we obtain our resources from the environment. The amount of resources on the planet will never get larger, but the amount of people will always increase. This means less resources per person as the population increases. To add to this problem, when people waste resources by throwing them into landfills, etc, this decreases the amount of resources per person even more.

Supposedly the basic law of economics will save us from running out of resources. The less resources there are to spread around, the more expensive they will be. The price will get exponentially great, like a y=1/x curve. Eventually this will get to a point where only the rich can have basic resources.

So, our economy needs to become more efficient, reusing resources in order to keep from falling into this future problem.

Has anyone read the book Red Mars? I like this book as it shows a good example of what happens to an economy with no respect for the enviroment and it's limited resources.

Re:Not a Favorable Article

[Sarah Thustra]

the new york times is an avowed left-wing rag....
michael is a known greenie tree-hugger
...is it any surprise he would be trying to advance his agenda with favorable articles?

Try this on for size:

The NYT is an avowed big-business-and-corrupt-politics-friendly rag, bought and paid for by advertising dollars, not citizen voices.

So is it any surprise that this article should come out now, now that people are finally starting to freak out about the vast environmental damage done by large corporations run with nothing in mind but their precious, almighty dollar? You mention the hysteria yourself--well, suddenly we're starting to see a rash of media pieces in which the Corporations Aren't The Bad Guys Anymore. No, Really, We're Environmentally Friendly. Now Give Us That Dollar.

The tactic is to keep people from realizing that allowing businesses to get out of the people's control--like we have for the last hundred years--IS the evil, it IS the reason for things like the shitty environment, the unfair economics, even the lack of AIDS medications in poor countries. And it'll only get worse as long as we allow it to go on.

What you're seeing in this article is the scrabbling of the fatcats to make sure that people don't pin them, and their absurd "free trade is free" rhetoric, as the cause of all these awful, pressing problems. This article wasn't advancing the "tree-hugger" agenda, you twerp, though I guess we can't blame you for falling for the angle they obviously wanted you to fall for. No, this piece, and the glut of others like it you'll probably run into, was propping up the big-business agenda--or as they say in Fight Club, "polishing the brass on the Titanic." 'Cause it's all comin' down, baby.

Sara Thustra

"Insustainable" does not mean "can go on until the rich feel they're rich enough".

Environmental accounting

[sakusha]

This is all a byproduct of a new system called "environmental accounting." For years, corporations have been used to applying standard accounting techniques to manufacturing processes to maximize profits and process efficiency, but nobody ever thought of applying those accounting methods to environmental issues. The classic EA example is a company that uses mercury in manufacturing. The accountant measures the mercury the co. buys, and subtracts the amount that ends up in the product plus the amount reclaimed from waste. For example, they buy 20 tons a year, and 15 goes into the products, 3 are reclaimed from waste. 2 tons are unaccounted for and are presumed to go directly into the environment. To plug the mercury leak, you just go through the process and see where it's not accounted for.

This article just cites examples where the gov't has mandated environmental accounting and gives disincentives to inefficient processes. If only we could get people to use EA just because it's good for the environment!

Re:Not a Favorable Article

[regexp]

'Cause it's all comin' down, baby.

I'll take the tyranny of The New York Times and their corporate fatcat sponsors over your brand of "revolution" anyday, since, even though you didn't mention it, your idea of rule by "citizen voices" is to hand power to exactly those few citizen voices who assent to *your* idea of what is right and just, and to hell with anyone else.

We've already tried it that way a number of times--China under Mao, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. It got pretty ugly, to say the least.

Re:You might not have noticed

[Johnny5000]

Pretty much no matter what we do to the earth, we're not going to wipe out all forms of life on earth, as you said. We can't 'destroy' the planet.
However, it's theoretically possible that some types of environmental damage could seriously affect our human quality of life.

We could wipe out the ozone layer, and animals would evolve to be more resistant to UV radiation. Some probably wouldnt be able to, and some would, but in the end we're not wiping out all forms of life on earth. But, I'd rather not have to take a bath in SPF 5000 every time I leave the house. Or only be able to go out at night. Sure, we could do it, but it would suck.

Same thing with global warming. If, (and it's a big if, I know. But bear with me here)... If we are causing the planet to warm up noticably, there would likely be some changes. THe land currently used for farmland might be turned to desert, for example. Sure, land that was previously frozen further north would now be a decent temperature for farmland. But it would seriously affect the quality of life for millions (billions?) or people.

As for new technologies and more efficiency being the answer... it's the answer for some problems, but not all.

-J5K

It's a bit more complicated than that really

[Sagarian]

Aluminum weighs 35 to 40% less than steel, when manufactured to the same strength requirement.

Steel endures much more flex without failure, whereas aluminum reaches its flexibility endurance limit faster. The failure mode of aluminum (bend some and break and absorb energy) is actually safer in the realm of automobile construction.

Aluminum space frames can be manufactured in a single piece, which makes prediction of their real-world behavior much easier to predict through computational models, requiring less physical testing.

Aluminum's lower weight makes it cheaper to transport throughout all phases of automobile manufacture.

If and as the cost per pound can come down enough that the benefits outweigh the costs, or the benefits become more important, we can expect aluminum to have a stronger presence in automotive manufacture.

recently, aluminum has gained ground in niche automotive products like pickup truck tailgates, hood assemblies, engine blocks (with GM introducing their first aluminum block truck engine in 2002)... areas where consumers can see the direct benefits.

I'm not an aluminum grandstander by any means. I just think the "steel is cheaper" argument is way too simple... it's really just a matter of time.

Re:Enviromentalism will only become more profitabl

[dragons_flight]

I disagree.

First off, who says the amount of people will always increase? Many industrialized nations have seen great dorps in population growth. Some places have even fallen so far that the birth rate doesn't match the death rate and thus they are actually shrinking. (IIRC, Italy was the leading example of this) All environments produce limits on what a sustainable population size is. It just happens that humans are capable of occupying an incredibly large environment.

Secondly, our most important resource is energy. Fossil fuels, wind, hydro-electric and solar power all ultimately derive their energy content from that big ball of fire in the sky. The sun will be with us for a real long time and technology has been moving it to be cheaper not more expensive to harness the energy as it comes out. Fusion (if it ever works) may provide virtually limitless energy supplies as well.

This is a general trend, the amount of resources available doesn't change much over time, but the cost to use them goes down because technology improves. Perhaps someday we will resort to mining landfills for raw materials but right now we are no where close to being critically short on most resources. For many raw materials the amount harvested from the environment still exceeds the amount consumed and discarded each year. Often we find alternatives to anything that is suddenly in short supply.

Coexisting peacefully with our environment is a good thing and we have been slowly moving in that direction. Don't think however that resource limits are going to cramp our lifestyles anytime soon.

Re:Not a Favorable Article

[regexp]

My point was to bring up examples from history of the terrible consequences of ideologically driven revolutions conducted in the name of "the people," but based on a concept of justice decided on unilaterally by an enlightened few. Railing against The New York Times as a tool of the capitalists, and threatening that "it's all comin' down, baby" is a lot closer to the ideals of Maoist revolutions than to democratic ideals of freedom and participatory government.

If you want to ignore history, that's your prerogative, and you do so at your own peril, but the "troll" label is not supposed to be used to silence opinions you disagree with.