سبز آزاد است: ایجاد مزیت رقابتی پایدار از طریق برتری سبز

In the summer of 2007, Subaru Indiana Automotive (SIA) began running television advertisements touting its environmental performance. Among other things, the ads claimed that SIA had achieved “zero-landfill.” This would mean that the company, whose 3,500 employees manufacture almost 1,000 automobiles per day, throws away less trash in a year than an average family of four does in a day. We were curious: was this real, or was it “green-washing” – a marketing ploy to only appear environmentally responsible? Surely, the amount of waste from an operation this size had to be enormous. Where was SIA hiding it? Had the company creatively redefined the word “zero?” Or was it merely forcing suppliers to take the waste back and deal with it themselves? And if SIA was truly zero-landfill, how could it justify the costs involved? Intrigued, we decided to conduct a study of SIA's environmental initiative. We contacted the company and arranged a tour. Although skeptical at the outset, we did in fact find a company whose environmental performance was extraordinary. We then requested, and were granted full research access, which allowed us to conduct an extended and in-depth investigation. SIA began its green initiative 20 years ago – long before business sustainability became a matter of general concern. Over the years, the company accumulated a record of environmental “firsts.” It was the first U.S. auto plant to receive ISO 14001 certification (1998); the first to have its grounds certified as a “Backyard Wildlife Habitat” by the National Wildlife Federation (2003); and the first automobile plant in the world to achieve zero-landfill (2004). Since 2000, it has reduced the waste discharged per vehicle by 99.9 percent (the remaining 0.1 percent is toxic waste that the EPA requires to be incinerated) and the electricity needed to make each vehicle by 25 percent. SIA now reuses more than six million pounds of packaging materials each year – saving over $2 million per year while keeping these materials out of landfills. But these numbers don’t begin to tell the story of the significant financial and competitive advantages that SIA's green initiative has created for it. In this article, we document the steps SIA took to get the results it did, and the unique competitive advantages it gained in the process. We also derive lessons that other organizations can use as they work to improve their green performance.

In the summer of 2007, Subaru Indiana Automotive (SIA) began running television advertisements touting its environmental performance. Among other things, the ads claimed that SIA had achieved “zero-landfill.” This would mean that the company, whose 3,500 employees manufacture almost 1,000 automobiles per day, throws away less trash in a year than an average family of four does in a day. We were curious: was this real, or was it “green-washing” – a marketing ploy to only appear environmentally responsible? Surely, the amount of waste from an operation this size had to be enormous. Where was SIA hiding it? Had the company creatively redefined the word “zero?” Or was it merely forcing suppliers to take the waste back and deal with it themselves? And if SIA was truly zero-landfill, how could it justify the costs involved? Intrigued, we decided to conduct a study of SIA's environmental initiative. We contacted the company and arranged a tour. Although skeptical at the outset, we did in fact find a company whose environmental performance was extraordinary. We then requested, and were granted full research access, which allowed us to conduct an extended and in-depth investigation. SIA began its green initiative 20 years ago – long before business sustainability became a matter of general concern. Over the years, the company accumulated a record of environmental “firsts.” It was the first U.S. auto plant to receive ISO 14001 certification (1998); the first to have its grounds certified as a “Backyard Wildlife Habitat” by the National Wildlife Federation (2003); and the first automobile plant in the world to achieve zero-landfill (2004). Since 2000, it has reduced the waste discharged per vehicle by 99.9 percent (the remaining 0.1 percent is toxic waste that the EPA requires to be incinerated) and the electricity needed to make each vehicle by 25 percent. SIA now reuses more than six million pounds of packaging materials each year – saving over $2 million per year while keeping these materials out of landfills. But these numbers don’t begin to tell the story of the significant financial and competitive advantages that SIA's green initiative has created for it. In this article, we document the steps SIA took to get the results it did, and the unique competitive advantages it gained in the process. We also derive lessons that other organizations can use as they work to improve their green performance.

Three decades ago, in his book Quality is Free, Philip Crosby observed that improving quality could actually save money. This challenged a fundamental assumption of the day and set managers and researchers off on a 30-year journey of learning and improvement that changed the way we understand the relationship between cost and quality. This article argues that the way managers think about the cost of improving environmental performance is poised for a similar shift. When approached in the right way, green, just as with quality, is free. Our findings are based on an extensive examination of Subaru Indiana Automotive's (SIA) pioneering 20-year environmental journey, on which it became a national green leader and learned how to make green improvement actually pay. The company has had a number of significant environmental firsts. For example, since 2004, it has been “zero-landfill.” This means that SIA, whose 3,500 employees manufacture almost 1,000 automobiles per day, throws away less in a year than an average family of four does in a day. Astonishingly, SIA did not attain this extraordinary performance with massive investments in new technology, but by engaging its front-line workers in integrating green thinking into all of its processes and operations. Because they are the ones who handle the waste at the point where it is created, front-line workers see many green improvement opportunities that their managers don’t. The thousands of small green improvement ideas they came up with year after year enabled the company to make green improvement truly profitable.