Resource Efficiency

By John Binns, BSc(Hons), MSc, AIEMA

Sorry to labour a point, I know you are hearing this every day on the news but times are hard. The credit crunch, recession, or whatever you might call it, is forcing businesses to make some tough choices about how they operate. What if I was to tell you that I might be able to save your company a significant amount of money and at the same time help reduce its impact on the environment? There has never been a more pressing time to consider being more resource efficient!

Resource efficiency, you might ask, what does that involve? Being resource efficient is all about managing, and hopefully reducing, raw materials, energy and water consumption to reduce costs and environmental impact. I have been interested in this subject for a while now as it offers our profession a chance to make significant direct cost savings. It may sound complicated, but you would be surprised – in most cases it isn’t. In fact, companies of all types and sizes can make some significant savings by undertaking what are quite often simple measures.

Where to Start

Let’s imagine that you’re stood at the bottom of seven steps, at the top is your aim – your company becoming resource efficient. What do you think are the steps that you need to go through to reach your aim?

Step 1 – Assessing Scope for Savings

Well, a good place to start is to determine the scope that is available to make resource efficiency savings. This will involve undertaking measurements. The old adage ‘if you don’t measure it you can’t manage it’, is true. Think about what your company does as a series of processes with inputs and outputs. Inputs might include raw materials, packaging, energy, water and consumables. Outputs might include releases to air, waste-water and solid and liquid waste. A good idea would be to compare the amount of material purchased with the amount in the final product. By ranking material costs this should give you some idea of which resources to look at.

Step 2 – Gaining Management Commitment

Step 2 is all about gaining the commitment of senior management. Without it life will be hard and the scheme will either not get implemented at all or will not be implemented to its full potential. How do you do this? Arrange a meeting with the relevant person at your company and spell out the potential benefits of going through this process. Draw attention to the fact that significant financial savings are likely to be made in addition to increased compliance with law, reduced taxes (e.g. landfill tax), keeping customers happy etc. Gaining the support of the person in command is crucial. It may prove advantageous to consider any potential objections beforehand, so that you are prepared to counteract them. Such objections may include:

• We have no wastes.
• Our wastes are small or low cost.
• The accounts do not show a problem.
• We comply with ‘Duty of Care’ regulations.
• It requires a positive decision to start.
• We don’t believe the savings potential.
• We did it last year.

Step 3 – Mapping Activities/Processes

This involves getting a good understanding of what actually goes on at your company, so that you can determine in more detail where savings can be made. A useful tool to help you do this is process mapping. To create a process map draw a flow diagram of the activities (you could call them sub-processes) that occur at your organisation – from where the raw material enters the site, to where the final product leaves. For those of you who are not manufacturers I suggest you think about the different departments/activities that your company has onsite. Perhaps use an organisation chart and/or site plan to help you, or undertake a tour of the site - I have used this method for mapping hotels, offices etc.

Step 4 – Quantity and Cost Determination

If you have been following the steps you should now have a process flow chart of some kind. The next step is to consider what goes into each process stage (energy, water etc) and what goes out (types of waste for example) and to determine cost and quantity data. You don’t have to have an in-depth understanding of cost, sometimes the best you can do is to make an educated guess. A good place to start is to consider looking at purchasing records for raw materials, as well as bills for gas, electricity, water, and sewage/trade effluent. Sources for consideration might include:

• Production data.
• Electricity and gas invoices.
• Water and effluent invoices.
• Waste disposal transfer notes.
• Raw material invoices.
• Stock information.
• Meter readings.

Consider the amounts over a fixed period such as the last financial year. It would also be a good idea to compare the total resource spend of your business with the turnover of the business. Once you have obtained the cost data make sure it is presented clearly in a way that is easy to understand, using graphs for example. Make sure you have considered the true cost of waste (solid, liquid emissions to air etc. all constitute waste). If you imagine waste costs as an iceberg, the tip of the iceberg above the water represents disposal costs. However the majority of the iceberg is hidden – hidden waste costs can include treatment, abatement costs, staff time, PPE, monitoring costs, additional utility costs etc. All these are much greater than what you actually pay your waste contractor to dispose of the waste.

Step 5 – Understanding and Generating Options

You should now know the scale of the problem; the next thing to consider is how to go about reducing your costs. Initially you should rank the issues that you considered in Step 4 using legal controls, true cost, or risks associated with storage and handling as your basis. You should then take those at the top of the list and generate ideas to reduce their production. Get staff involved, particularly those on the shop floor who will have a good understanding of what occurs on a day-to-day basis. You could achieve this by hosting a brainstorming session at which you establish simple ground rules to encourage productivity: any idea should be considered valid and written down; no idea should be criticised; everyone should try and feed off each others’ ideas.

Additionally it may be valuable to think about the root cause of wastage on your site. For example, poor waste segregation may be the result of inadequate training or labelling. There are also many guidance publications that are available free of charge such as those produced by both Envirowise and the Carbon Trust. These are easy to understand and contain case studies to help you reduce your energy, waste, water and raw materials. If you want more information on raw material, water and waste reduction have a look at the Envirowise website, whereas the Carbon Trust site provides more information on efficient use of energy.

Step 6 – Opportunity Assessment

You should now have a list of ideas to make your business more efficient, the next step is to determine whether they are feasible. You should consider whether or not each idea could be implemented in a practical, achievable way; whether it would be economically viable; what capital investment (if any) would be required; what the running costs might be; and what the payback would be. You should also undertake an environmental assessment to ensure that your potential solution would not just involve transferring the problem to another part of the environment, but would actually minimise the negative impact of your business on the environment.

Step 7 – Project Implementation and Maintaining Momentum

Step 7 involves implementing the ideas you have generated. Produce an action plan of what must be done, who is responsible and the timeframe in which it must be completed. Be careful, these schemes can be forgotten about. Ongoing leadership is required to maintain positive attitudes. Ongoing monitoring should also be undertaken and the results should be communicated to people at all levels within the organisation. It is important to consider ways in which you can maintain momentum: identify key persons within your organisation; identify motivational factors; think about the resistance you might encounter and consider ways to overcome it (similar to Step 2). Developing a communications strategy to get your message across should also be considered. Furthermore, it is important to continually assess the successes and failures of your resource efficiency systems at regular intervals - this is a project that needs to be managed like any other.

Well Done!

Well done! If you followed each of these Steps you will now have achieved your aim, and there has never been a better time for your organisation to become a resource efficient company. The financial and environmental gains, as well as the many other benefits you will achieve, will make it well worth the effort.

References

Envirowise

Carbon Trust

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