Page 45 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

24 Chapter Two

As shown in Chapter 4, sustainable de velopment is a logical
outgrowth of industry practices, such as resource con serva tion and
envi ronmental stewardship, which have been ongoing for years.
Leading manufactur ing firms have broadened their focus from pollu-
tion pre vention and waste minimi zation to a more integrated “life
cycle” approach, replacing “end-of-pipe” pollution control methods
with more cost-effective process design changes, such as reducing the
quantities of toxic materials used or produced as by-products. The
most striking change in recent years has been the elevation of envi-
ronmental issues to an unprecedented level of strategic importance,
with visibility at the Board of Directors level. Thanks in large part
to rising energy costs and global warming concerns, environmental
management has moved from a peripheral, tactical activity into the
mainstream of business thinking.
The “early adopter” firms that leaped onto the environmental
bandwagon during the 1990s were captained by visionaries who
believed in a sustainable and profitable future. In North America,
these enlightened individuals have included a number of influential
chief executive officers; for example, Samuel Johnson of SC Johnson,
Frank Popoff of Dow Chemical, Maurice Strong of Ontario Hydro,
Chad Holliday of DuPont, and Ray Anderson of Interface. But vision-
aries are always a minority, and only when their vision proves cred -
ible do the more pragmatic members of the community begin to pay
attention. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, corporate sus-
tainability initiatives began to grow phenomenally, as more and more
companies recognized that sustainability was an essential factor in
their continued competitiveness.
There are good reasons for this—companies are receiving strong
signals from all segments of their stakeholders that corporate respon-
sibility, including environmental stewardship, is essential to long-
term business success. The specific driving forces that influence
corporate responsibility, and hence the adoption of DFE, are illus-
trated in Figure 2.1 and are the subject of the next two chapters.
Chapter 3 describes the external drivers associated with changing
societal norms and expectations, while Chapter 4 describes the inter-
nal business drivers for DFE, including contributions to competitive-
ness and shareholder value. Perhaps the most important factor in
changing industry attitudes has been the realization that paying
attention to environmental responsibility can actually increase profit-
ability. Reducing pollution at the source and designing products and
processes in ways that enhance environ mental performance gener-
ally result in higher productivity and reduced operating costs, while
improving brand image and reputation.
It must be emphasized that DFE is only one facet of corporate envi-
ronmental responsibility, focusing on the innovation process. There
are many other initiatives that companies must pursue to ensure that
they are meeting their environmental commitments, ranging from