Organisational Strategies to control wastes ..

Consumerism is bound to generate waste. Humans world over have generated 1.2 billion tonnes of solid waste in 2016 which is bound to increase to 2.5 billion tonnes by 2025. (click here).

Companies are going all out in ensuring they give the customers the best both in terms of product durability and product quality. These organisations are trying their level best to reduce the environmental wastes as a result of the use of their products. A product which fails early or reaches its end of life early is a burden to the environment as it has to be disposed earlier than other competing products, damaging and polluting the environment at a faster rate than other competing products.

Increased customer awareness and sensibility discourages customers from purchasing products that have a short life or an early end of life.

We find companies taking lot of steps to control wastes, by planning to control waste generation at the different stages of

1. design and testing, 
2. supply chain and delivery, 
3. useful life
   
4. value or usage life extension
5. end of life disposal 
   

The steps taken by the organisations in this stage are detailed below.

• designing the products themselves with less wasteful components and ready for recycling. A well designed product besides meeting the performance requirements of the applications, does also ensure longer life of product and better recyclability in case of recycled products. Even if the end products have to be disposed, its impact on the environment has to be minimal.
  
• optimising supply chain costs in the delivery / distribution of the product. 
• getting locally available raw materials for production
• finding manufacturing process design that is minimally exploitative of the environment, with lower carbon footprint and better recyclability
  
• better end of life disposability of products with minimal environmental impact
  
• outlining detailed steps for careful and extended use of the product by better documentation and web related information dissemination, arranging call centres to clear operational doubts 
• steps detailing on how the product can be reused and recycled for extended use
  
• arranging collection stations in city suburbs, having arrangements with waste collection centres and government organisations to lift the waste for careful processing

Though the actions are encouraging, the success of these actions are not great. Something is amiss. As organisations have come to realise, placing the onus of waste control and disposal entirely on the customer is not the correct strategy for organisations to adopt.

While continuing research on how to control waste and improve waste handling and processing, the author happened to read an HBR article titled, Companies are working with consumers to reduce waste, by Esposito, Tse and Soufani, HBR, June '16, (click here), where the authors stress that it is mainly customer support and customer engagement that finally marks the success of any waste management process.

These customers can be individual customer to major organisations who consume raw materials to product finished goods.

• Finding the right partners
• Giving incentives
• Start  trial program with freedom to change
• build a culture of collective value with customers
  

The HBR research and vast experience of the authors tells us that it is the customers who  are the most important part  of the chain and hence the customer should be the focus in trying to identify the source of waste and the disposal.

What is not wanted or desired by the customer should be taken out of the system as early as possible, giving only what the customer wants in the right quantity.

Andrew Winston in this August 2011 HBR article Excess Inventory wastes Carbon and Energy, not just money (click here) mentions of an interesting statistic from Association of Supply Chain Management Professionals that there is almost $8 trillion worth of inventory held in different parts of the supply chain for different products world over, of which almost $2 trillion is just waiting as inventory in the United States alone. Managing inventory thus is a victory both financially and in terms of sustainability.

George ..