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20 Leading Green Execs |
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Debra Taevs, City of Seattle
Recycling's pushed 'reduce, reuse' out of equation by Debra Taevs - 6.1.05
For the past few decades, recycling has been at the center of our collective environmental attention.
If you start a conversation on the subject of using less paper, you can easily get a response such as, “Oh, you
mean recycling?” The City of Seattle so focused on using quantities of material recycled as a measure of environmental
success that when The Boeing Co.’s recycling tonnage dropped a few
years ago, it raised a red flag. It took little sleuthing to discover
the reason Boeing was recycling less was because they had actually
reduced paper consumption by a full 80 percent within a 10-year period.
They didn’t have as much paper to recycle.
Through “lean management” and a lot of technology, Boeing has evolved
beyond the in-house joke that a plane wasn’t finished until the
paperwork equaled the weight of the aircraft. Now nearly all processes
are electronic and an airplane is built almost without paper.
While most organizations can’t compete with Boeing’s tech budget, there
is starting to be a shift in thinking from “recycling as environmental
panacea” to serious attempts at reducing the amount of paper used in
the first place. In October 2004, Washington Gov. Gary Locke issued a
state Executive Order with four sustainability objectives including a
30 percent reduction in paper use by state agencies. In February 2005,
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels issued a similar order asking the city’s
10,000 employees to cut paper consumption 30 percent by the end of
2006.
In 2003, City of Seattle employees used a mountain of paper 10,000 feet
higher than the state’s highest peak, Mount Rainier. Using another
locally significant measure, the quantity of copy and printer paper is
higher than 40 Space Needles. Defending ourselves in advance against
charges of taxpayer abuse, it is important to say that we are about
average in terms of office paper consumption in the United States, with
each employee using 10,000 sheets annually.
Our paper use roughly parallels the presence of copiers and printers in
modern society — copier and printer paper use increased faster than any
other type.
Why should we care about our increased use if we are recycling?
Seattle’s goal is for 60 percent of all solid waste to be recycled by
2006. Is that enough to make us good environmental citizens?
In a word, the answer is no. The use of so much paper has a long list
of environmental consequences. Paper manufacturing and even paper
recycling are extremely resource intensive.
According to the Federal Network on Sustainability, the U.S. pulp and
paper industry is the second largest consumer of energy and uses more
water to produce a ton of product than any
other industry. A variety of air and water pollutants accompany paper
production. The number of trees cut for America’s paper is a subject of
hot debate. One estimate is that 12,430 square miles of forests are cut
to make paper each year. You can go to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency’s Paper Calculator at www.ofee.gov/recycled/cal-index.htm to look at the environmental externalities of your own organization’s paper use.
Using less is the first commandment of the environmental golden rule,
“Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.” Reduction, however, is less tangible than
recycling. Many managers haven’t focused on it.
Paper use does respond to attention, however. Organizations serious
about reducing their consumption are setting goals to lower use between
10 and 30 percent, all of which points to
the suspicion that there may be quite a bit of non-essential fat to cut
in the way we are using paper.
Reduction strategies fall into three categories — policy, behavior
change and institutional process or technology changes — that once in
place are mostly invisible to staff.
A policy regarding paper use reduction is important because it
demonstrates management commitment and sets a goal. Policy can trigger
innovative ideas from staff, as well as prompt reluctant employees to
become conscious of wasteful practices.
Behavior can be shifted by reminders like posters or stickers to “think
before you print,” and to send documents electronically rather than in
paper form. Making a public commitment to run “green meetings” without
printed agendas, or to make duplexing (doubleside copying and printing)
a standard practice raises awareness of paper use and prompts behavior
changes. Portland’s Metro regional government made a commitment to use
“every side of every piece of paper” and dedicates a copier drawer to
paper already printed on one side to be used for drafts and internal
documents.
Institutional changes may involve technology or process changes that
eliminate the need for paper — online libraries, elimination of
non-essential printed reports and e-mailed newsletters are examples.
One strategy that saved the Port of Seattle money as well as paper was
reducing the ratio of printers to employees. Like many companies, the
Port had seen a proliferation of printers in recent years. With a
printer in every nook, discretionary printing grows as well as costs
for maintenance, energy, toner and indoor air emissions. A strategy
that has reduced expenditures dramatically is to re-evaluate output
devices and physical locations and then retire under-utilized machines
in exchange for fewer multi-functional devices.
Deborah Taevs is project coordinator
for the City of Seattle’s PaperCuts campaign. For more information and
paper-saving tips, see www.seattle.gov/papercuts/.
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