GreenClips.63 01.15.97 MONSANTO MOVES TOWARD SUSTAINABILITY Harvard Business Review interviews Robert B. Shapiro, chairman and CEO of Monsanto Company, on the company's push to sustainability. With its chemical industry history, the St. Louis, Missouri company may seem like an unlikely environmental leader. But seven Monsanto teams involving 140 employees are moving the company from cleaning up and preventing pollution to identifying opportunities for revenue growth in environmentally sustainable new products and technologies. Three teams are working on tools and methods that will assess, measure, and provide direction for internal management. The Eco-Efficiency Team is mapping and measuring inputs and outputs from all Monsanto processes. The Full-Cost Accounting Team is developing a method to account for the total cost of a product that includes the true environmental cost of producing, using, recycling, and disposing of it. The Index Team is developing criteria for business units to measure whether they're moving toward sustainability. Another three teams are looking externally to identify sustainability needs that Monsanto businesses might address. The New Business/New Products Team is examining what a marketplace that increasingly selects sustainable products and services will value. The Water Team is looking at solving global water needs and the Global Hunger Team is studying how Monsanto might develop and deliver technologies to alleviate world hunger. A seventh Communications and Education Team is developing training for Monsanto's 29,000 employees. — Harvard Business Review, January-February 1997, p. 79, by Joan Magretta. ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN PRACTICE Energy software programs are helping architects and engineers incorporate energy efficient products and approaches into buildings. To test energy ideas on a particular building, designers might use US Department of Energy programs — DOE 2, Energy-10, A Simplified Energy Analysis Method — or Northern States Power's Energy Assets Program (EAP) "The tools exist," says EAP coordinator David Eijadi, "but they haven't existed long enough to become common practice or for the fee structure to incorporate them into standard practice." Other obstacles to energy-efficient products and approaches are building owners unaware of their benefits, minimum standards set by 20-year-old building codes, and housing developments that don't plan for passive solar orientation. — Architecture Minnesota, January/February 1997, p. 19, by Camille LeFevre. THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY Few companies incorporate sustainability in their strategic thinking, says Stuart L. Hart, director of the Corporate Environmental Management Program at the University of Michigan Business School. Companies must ask whether they are part of the solution or part of the problem, Hart says. Thinking in these terms, they can develop a vision of sustainability to guide them through three stages of environmental strategy — Stage One: Pollution Prevention reduces waste or eliminates it instead of merely controlling pollution by cleaning up after the fact. Stage Two: Product Stewardship fundamentally changes product and process design to reduce their life-cycle environmental impact. Stage Three: Clean Technology is ultimately needed to make major progress toward sustainability. — Harvard Business Review, January-February 1997, p. 67, by Stuart L. Hart. ANDERSEN MAKES WINDOWS FROM WOOD WASTE Minnesota's Andersen Corporation uses waste wood fiber mixed with plastic resin to make a new line of windows and doors called Renewal by Andersen. Senior research engineer Mike Deaner welcomes the composite material because he finds the supply of virgin wood getting more expensive but lower in quality. Best of all, says Deaner, it's a much better use of resources. Andersen may need wood fiber from outside sources in the future, but for now mill trimmings and sawdust from its own product operations supply enough wood fiber for the Renewal line. Research and development for the Renewal line, a joint project of Andersen and Aspen Research Corporation, began five years ago. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources also spurred commercial use of recycled wood and plastic composites beginning in 1994 with a program to market wood waste, diverting it from landfills. — BioCycle, December 1996, p. 39, by Brian Lavendel. SOFTWARE COMPARES CLEANING SUPPLIES Rochester Midland Corporation offers software to compare its housekeeping and maintenance supplies with competing products. Its Environmentally Preferable Comparison Computer Software comes pre-loaded with data on RMC's Enviro Care products. By entering detailed data on competing products, facility maintenance personnel can compare human health and environmental impact, price, and packaging. The software provides easy-to-understand explanations for technical terms like "aquatic toxicity" and "flash point MSDS Sec. 4". The software is $99 and runs on Windows and DOS-based computers. For more information phone Galen Haar, 800.234.0924. — The Green Business Letter, January 1997.