Efficient Processes as a Way to Sustainability

To those who celebrate, I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.

I am in the middle of reading "Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution", a book that probably should be one of the first, if not the first, book on sustainability that people read. I don't know why it has taken me so long to get to it, but I am just glad that I chose to read it during a break between semesters so I could give it its just attention.

Anyway, what I got out of one of the chapters (among other things) is that just by being more efficient, companies can be more sustainable. It may seem obvious, but it's not something that I have found myself ever focused on. Interesting, then, that the same day I read that particular chapter, I read an article in FAST COMPANY called, "No Satisfaction at Toyota". The article is about just that - that the employees of the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky are constantly changing their processes in search of continous improvement. In particular, the example I'll mention is detailed at the beginning of the article - an example that shows that improvements in their process of painting cars has resulted in Toyota now throwing away virtually no paint, where they had thrown away approximately 30%.

In an ideal world, Toyota and all other car manufacturers would use paint that was not toxic or harmful to the environment in any way. On the way to these types of changes, however, being as efficient as possible is something to strive for.