Create sustainable products and services

- At many companies, the majority of product sustainability efforts have been focused on meeting basic compliance and regulatory requirements as well as improving efficiencies. This is a good thing, because compliance and cost savings are the foundation of a strong product sustainability strategy. However, many companies now see that sustainable product development goes beyond compliance and can give a company an edge in meeting their environmental challenges and better satisfying customer product and service preferences. In these leading companies the goal is to incorporate sustainability thinking as a foundation of the product development process. They're moving beyond mere compliance towards making sustainability a competitive advantage. In what areas can you evaluate and improve upon your own product's sustainability efforts? Let's look at a few examples. You're in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries in which you do business, right? Can you now substitute less toxic, more sustainable materials into your products and go beyond basic compliance? If you haven't looked recently, you'll be surprised at how cost competitive and high quality new greener chemistries, composites, components, and materials are than even five years ago. Let's look at minimizing energy utilization, emissions, and by-products. Talk about leaving money on the table. Ensure that you and your suppliers are investing in low-cost, high efficiency lighting, motors, heating, cooling, and waste elimination efforts. Scrapper waste is actually high value product that wasn't well utilized, or re introduced into production. This means you're not running or participating in a truly smart manufacturing process. Speaking of intelligent manufacturing, the best manufacturers these days have ambitious zero waste goals, and many of them are achieving it. How about packaging a huge cost and a typically intense environment burden for companies? Are you minimizing the use of packaging materials in general and introducing reusable or recyclable materials? If you're a big user of paper or other forest resources in your packaging or products, are you verifying that the materials originated from sustainably-managed forests? These days companies and customers want to know that they're buying responsibly produced products and services. Check out FSC's website or the rainforest alliance website for more information on how to buy or specify sustainably sourced paper and wood. Some basic first steps for developing products using a sustainability lens, develop a simple vision of success for how sustainability can contribute to new products. Visit the websites of companies such as Unilever, Ikea, Patagonia, or REI to learn how these companies articulate their own vision of success. Don't be intimidated by the size of these companies. Instead think about what might work in your world big or small. Explicitly link business objectives and sustainability goals to specific product initiatives. This can be as simple as a whiteboard list with business sustainability objectives on the left, and products on the right. Gaps will become obvious. Ideate a draft-sustainable product portfolio. Take a quick look at key metrics. Does this portfolio achieve revenue objectives, strategic impact, sustainability goals? Is the risk acceptable? What are the big gaps? This can be very simple to start. Designing sustainability into your products is an activity that requires company-wide input. It's not just the responsibility of product managers and product developers. You'll need to get buy in from supply chain colleagues as well as marketing and sales in order to have a truly integrated program. To get started, identify some achievable goals around efficiency, toxics reduction, material substitution, or integrating certified products. As you design and develop with an eye towards sustainability small incremental changes can lead to big gains, and set in motion a more sustainable and robust product development and marketing program for your company.