CM/Spotlight: Sustainability Image courtesy of RyanKing999/iStockphoto/Thinkstock Sustainable? By: Ed Roberts Can You Afford Not To Be Create value by enhancing your brand and reducing common operational costs. I Ed Roberts, regional sustainability director – Europe, Sealed Air has been working in the commercial cleaning and hygiene products industry, supporting the institution-al & laundry and food & beverage markets for 35 years. He has held various R&D, technical, marketing, sales, EHS and sustainability roles in Europe and the U.S. Roberts has been a member of the Cleaning and Support Services Association (CSSA) Sustainability Committee; the National Core Industry Committee, British Institute of Cleaning Science (BICSc); and the Cleaning Industry National Training Organization (CINTO) Committee. If a low energy light bulb costs $2.50 and a stan-dard 100-watt tungsten filament bulb costs $1, which one would you buy? If you chose the low energy bulb, congratula-tions; you are not only reducing your environmental footprint, but after about one month you are in profit, too. When organizations say that they want to be “green” but do not want to pay more for it, they may be missing the point — sustainability is not about what you pay, it’s about the value you gain. The value you gain by enhancing your brand value and growth with your customers and share-holders; the value you gain by reducing your water, energy and waste costs. Organizational Challenges One of the main barriers preventing an organization from being more sustainable and benefiting from top-line growth and operational cost reduction is the organization itself, particularly its purchasing processes. This is not so much about a green procurement policy of what is bought, but who buys it. Larger organizations will have a procurement team, each member of that team having their own range of products and services to procure and usu-ally with individual targets to reduce the spending over that range. Often, the person responsible for procuring cleaning products, equipment and tools is not the same person responsible for procuring water and energy, who may be a different person to the for more info Visit www.cmmonline.com and type in search keyword: Operations . For more information on related products, visit www.cmmonline.com , select BUYERS’ GUIDE from the main navigation bar, and enter keyword: Sustainability . one for waste management, who in turn is not responsible for the costs associated with employee absenteeism through illness or injury. This can be more fragmented when two organi-zations are involved. For example, a facility services provider usually does not pay for the water and energy that they use on their client’s site. Understandably, therefore, the procurement manager for cleaning products is unlikely to wel-come an increase in spending of say, $1,000 per year, even if that additional spending could save his organization, say $10,000 per year in water, energy, waste, productivity, injury rates, etc. and/or delivers a $10,000 per year growth through brand value, customer relationships and client satisfaction. The persuasion is even harder if the cost saving is seen as an “insurance premium.” Why spend extra on food hygiene when they haven’t had a problem in the past? And even if they do have a food-poisoning prob-lem, it is not the procurement manager’s problem. This is not a criticism of procurement profession-als or teams — how do they know that a product or service saves energy and water unless the manu-facturer tells them? Secondly, the buyer needs help and support to escalate the overall benefits to the organization or to get to higher levels within the organization with-out undermining the buyer. Facility services providers need to realize that the potential savings in water, energy, waste, etc., possibly at a higher service cost, will undoubtedly 26 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • August 2013
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