Green productivity, a tool for organizational development

By Dr. Lalith Senaweera

With the development of science and technology, new products and services are rapidly increasing and therefore, consumers have more choice and opportunities to select goods and services available in the market.

However, because of these developments, it is an accepted fact that every organisational activity involves the use of environmental or natural resources. This has led to action by the authorities to minimise damage to the environment while taking care to avoid waste of natural resources.

However, it has been observed that globally the pattern of production and consumption has become unsustainable, impacting sustainable development. The growing public concern about the negative impact on the environment has prompted many governments to reconsider the strategy for growth and economic development and most countries are trying their level best to create a balance between development and environmental degradation.

Priority

However, it was observed that many countries have used concepts such as 'the solution to pollution is dilution' or end-of-pipe treatment and as a result the environment gets polluted and many negative outcomes were experienced by many countries.

Because of these concerns, many international organisations have given their highest priority to look into these areas and to develop appropriate tools to preserve the environment while keeping room for economic development.

In the good old days, the common business response to environmental pollution was to ignore such problems. This was possible because environmental issues were relatively small as the industrialisation was yet to start and also because awareness of health and environmental impact was not high.

Nevertheless, over the years, there has been progressive pressure on environment and natural resources, as the consequences are becoming evident in increasing proportions.

High costs

Many governments have identified that environmental problems can be categorised into two broad areas - the negative factors that arise out of unplanned development and that which take place due to poverty and under-development.

To handle the effects of the first category, environmental standards to regulate the discharge of pollutants were introduced.

This resulted in the use of end-of-pipe treatment systems. As the discharge standards became more stringent, the cost of such end-of-pipe treatment became more expensive and affected the economic viability of some industries.

Besides the high costs, it was found that the end-of-pipe treatment approach was not sufficient to tackle the situation. Experts said that the pollutants were not eliminated but merely transferred from one medium to another.

Because of poverty, many poor families face natural resource issues such as land, potable water and also fulfilling their basic needs such as food, fuel, shelter and employment. This scenario shows the necessity of increasing crop and animal productivity on a continuing basis, while creating gainful employment in villages.

Therefore, it is necessary to have accelerated development for the alleviation of poverty which to a great extent is responsible for many of our environmental problems.

These responses came in various forms maturing gradually from command and control regimes to voluntary systems emphasising prevention of pollution at its source, waste minimisation, cleaner production and environmental management systems such as ISO 14000 series.

These voluntary systems were found to be more cost-effective than using a command and control approach alone.

International initiatives

The world' has had various major fora to discuss these issues and some of those are: Stockholm Conference - 1972, Nairobi Conference - 1982,UNCED, Rio de Janeiro - 1992, agenda 21, Ratified Basel Convention, and Ratified Framework Climate Change Convention.

The Green Productivity (GP) concept was introduced by the Asian Productivity Organisation (APO) in 1994 as an outcome of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. GP is a strategy to address environmentally sustainable development and aims at enhancing productivity and socio-economic development while ensuring environmental protection.

It applies environment management tools, techniques, and technologies to reduce the impact of an organisation's or communities' activities, goods and services on the environment. GP is applicable to the manufacturing, agricultural, and service sectors. The benefits gained from GP implementation are significant in terms of productivity enhancement and environmental protection.

GP also addresses interaction between economic activities and community development. Another dimension of GP is the role of the public sector (government and education) in environmental protection and awareness.

Within this framework, the APO particularly addresses the needs for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to mobilise scarce organisational resources to increase productivity and protect the environment.

GP is a new paradigm introduced by the APO taking into consideration the concepts available in the world, over the years. Source: Asian Productivity Organisation

GP practices

One of the important features of GP is that it leads to gains in profitability through improvements in productivity and environmental performance.

The Green Productivity concept has been developed from the integration of two important developmental strategies, productivity improvement and environmental protection.

Productivity provides the framework for continuous improvement while environmental protection provides the foundation for sustainable development.

Therefore, Green Productivity is an important strategy for enhancing productivity and environmental performance for overall socio-economic development.

It is the application of appropriate techniques, technologies and management systems to produce environmentally compatible goods and services.

Excessive use of resources or generation of waste is indicative of low productivity and poor environmental performance.

In many ways these are manufacturing defects that need to be consistently set right. To improve the situation, GP pursues a strategy based on technical and managerial interventions. It is a process of continuous improvement.

The practice of GP has four distinguishing characteristics:

Environmental compliance: The main factor of GP is environmental protection, and the first point is compliance. GP emphasises pollution prevention and source reduction. While achieving environmental compliance it is the unique characteristic of GP to improve productivity. These practices lead to a situation beyond compliance to improve the quality of life.

Productivity improvement: GP practices follow the famous concept of plan-do-check-action (PDCA) cycle which is the concept of continuous improvement ensuring not only productivity improvement, but also environmental improvement. This is a dynamic and iterative process.

Integrated people-based approach: One of the strengths of GP is its worker involvement and team and project-based approach. Its people-based approach extends to improve working environment, workers' health and safety, non-discrimination and related social welfare issues. The approach involves multi-stakeholder participation.

Information driven improvement: A proper documentation and reporting mechanisms based on accepted benchmarks on Quality Management System (QMS) and Environmental Management System (EMS) are the features of GP as it leads to the creation of an identification, measurement and take-action culture.

There are six main steps in the GP methodology framework, which organisations can use to implement GP projects.

Step I - Getting Started

This step needs the formulation of cross functional teams comprising different departments and divisions of the organisation. The team should carry out a walk-through survey and collect information.

Step II - Planning

This step covers the identification of problems and the root causes of such problems. Once identification is done it is the responsibility of the team to set objectives and targets.

Step III - Generation, Evaluation and Prioritising of GP options

Considering the problem, the team should select the GP options by screening them and selecting the appropriate ones.

Step IV - Implementing GP options

Prepare a plan including training, awareness and competence-building on GP options and implement the selected options.

Step V - Monitoring and review

Monitor and review the results of the implementation of GP options and have a management review with the top management to make appropriate steps to ensure that the GP project meets objectives and targets.

Step VI - Sustaining GP

Incorporate changes to the organisation's system of management and identify a new area for another GP project to improve that area too.

Organisations realise improvements in productivity which accrue to them over time in the form of increased efficiency in resource use, lower costs of production, decreased waste and end-of-pipe costs.

In countries with complex regulatory systems, the GP techniques and methodology lowers environmental compliance costs. The spill-over effect is improvement in the social environment. Sustainability is a key issue in the GP vision, disclosing the methodology and practices used by practitioners.

The writer is the Director General of the Sri Lanka Standards Institution