Rethinking your business approach with Lean sustainability

Most companies are notoriously short-sighted, always looking for ways to improve business today rather than tomorrow. This approach makes sense, especially given how slavish corporations are to their shareholders – they need to show notable improvements each quarter to ensure their investors and backers don't lose faith in the products and services they provide.

Unfortunately, that can lead to some serious issues for the long term, as what may be an effective solution today isn't necessarily an ideal one for tomorrow. Companies may apply “Band-Aid” fixes to problems, rather than looking at the root cause. They may also make decisions that negatively impact outcomes in the future because they have less of an immediate impact.

Green and sustainable operations is one area that many companies may not think about, precisely because they are so short-sighted. Their current activities regarding the environment aren't likely to have an immediate impact, so for many companies, sustainability isn't something they devote a lot of time to. They think that going green will have a negative impact on the short-term profitability of their companies, and avoid these types of efforts as a result.

“Conventional business has assumed an inexhaustible supply of raw material from nature,” Zero Waste's Gary Langenwalter wrote in a white paper. “It has used a 'take-make waste' model, in which virtually all materials eventually wind up in a landfill from which they cannot easily be used by future generations.  For 200 years we have been able to find substitutes, often better ones, for materials that were running out, like petroleum for whale oil, or synthetic rubber for natural rubber during World War II.”

Lean gives green short-term viability
Many businesses believe that ecological impact is important, but they struggle to justify spending money on going green because it may jeopardize profitability. However, if Lean manufacturing has proved anything, it's that green can be extremely beneficial in the short-term if it's coupled with Lean.

Lean encourages businesses to reduce the amount of needless waste they produce. By going Lean, many companies have found sustainability is almost a byproduct – they don't even have to devote special effort to achieve green operations.

“Like lean, sustainability starts with educating people at all levels to see with different eyes, ask pointed questions and make decisions based on sustainable criteria,” the source adds. “It aligns efforts at all levels toward an easily-understood goal.”

In short, businesses should investigate Lean if they want to go green.