Lean and Green: Profit for Your Workplace and the Environment

Rating:
Summary: Excellent. Practical. Hopeful.
Review:



"Lean and Green" is a must-read for anyone involved in business and/or sustainability. Personally, I've been involved in both. I've hosted my own radio show that included "lean and green" types of subjects. And I'm impressed by what Pam Gordon has done. Rather than being theoretical or abstract, she's drawn upon her corporate experience and expertise. She's provided a ton of real-world, lean-and-green business examples from IBM, Celestica, NEC, Apple, Horizon and many other companies. She's also provided a framework for people in business who want to introduce lean-and-green activities within their own companies. And, perhaps most importantly of all, she has chronicled some key indicators of a little-recognized trend these days: the shift towards a world of manufacturing that uses far less materials and energy and produces far less waste. "Lean and Green" is easy-to-read and hopeful. I don't recommend books very much. I recommend this one.





Rating:
Summary: Save the environment...and money
Review: From time to time, business leaders have invested time, energy, attention, and financial resources in the respected work of environmental protection. The work from the corporate sector has not been consistent, appreciated, or encouraged. Through this book, the author hopes to stimulate more organizations to be actively supportive of the environment-and good business practices. A Certified Management Consultant with significant personal engagement with corporate environmental issues, Pamela Gordon profiles the work of twenty employers to show what can be done.

Many authors gather profiling information for books like this by researching on the internet, magazine articles, other books, and industry reports. To her credit, Gordon personally visited 16 of the companies cited, with the other four being visited by people from her firm. This direct involvement adds a higher degree of authenticity to her work and this book.

Lean and Green is organized into three sections. Part One presents four steps for creating a lean and green organization: Question Wasteful Practices, Gain Lean and Green Endorsement Using Business Language, Collaborate to Achieve Lean and Green Goals, and Track Progress for Environment and Profit. Interwoven through these introductory chapters are stories about how the 20 profiled employers have applied these approaches. The organizations are mostly large, well-known companies, and a city government, but the principles can be applied in smaller organizations, as well.

The second section of the book presents Real-Life Examples of Putting Lean and Green into Practice. Ten chapters lay out the how-to of building a higher consciousness and effectiveness of environmental practices. Again, Gordon uses examples and experiences of her profiled companies and their people to illustrate and emphasize her points.

The third part of the book, How to Make the Most Difference, is best reported to you by listing the powerful chapter headings: How to Become an Environmental Leader in Your Organization, Work with Your Organizational Culture to Support Change, Be an Environmental Activist Using Tactics That Benefit Business, and The Fastest Route to Lean and Green. Quotes are used to open each chapter, as many authors do. To focus even more strongly on the dedication and focus of her profiled corporate activists, Gordon quotes people from the companies rather than outside sources. Each chapter ends with a valuable summary of the chapter, entitled "Making it Easy."

This book will smooth the way for its intended audiences: employees, managers, top leaders, and observers of organization that have great potential to make a difference. As I read the book, I found myself already becoming more aware of opportunities in my own surroundings to make a difference. If you're interested in protecting the environment and your company's bottom line, this book will open your eyes and give you tools for success.

Rating:
Summary: Turning received wisdom on its head
Review: Gordon's book turns upside down claims that environmentally sound practices are either expensive or bad for business; to the contrary, reducing waste and using cleaner processes increases business profitability. She shows how businesses of all sizes can incorporate good environmental practices, and she backs up her points with dozens of real-world examples. With "Lean and Green" to point the way, every business can design its own plans forreducing environmental impact. Her style is informal, clear, and encouraging. This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in either business or the environment.

Rating:
Summary: Motivating my students to Recycle
Review: I am a middle school math and science teacher in El Cerrito, California. After reading only part of this wonderful book, I was able to implement some of the stategies Pamela Gordon suggested in her book. Our school has an existing recycle program that is used with some enthusiasm by some of the students. When giving the sixth grade their annual introduction to the recycle program, I used the suggestion at the end of Chapter 12, Recycle: The Third Best Stategy in the RRR (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) Trilogy. Ann Tenore of Celestica labeled the waste receptacles as "Landfill" and I held up the waste receptacle in the room and called it landfill and asked the students why I had just said that. They got it! We had a long discussion about landfills, and how we have to limit what goes into them. The students requested a field trip to actually see a landfill. Then we looked through that receptacle and found that most of the items in it that day should have been put in the recycle boxes in the room. What a consciousness raising that was. They also realized how important it was to tell their families, and how if each one told someone else, the impact could be significant! The students were so enthused, they have taken on the project of making labels for all the receptacles in the middle school. They also are far more careful as what they put into the recptacles. I will also introduce other strategies, and try to arrange for Pamela Gordon to come speak to the school about her strategies. Kudos to Pamela Gordon for making a difference!

Rating:
Summary: Useful at the level to which it is pitched
Review: The core theme is that, if you reduce waste and increase recycling, it will be good for the environment and for profits. The theme is supported with a wealth of examples. This is a book for those who are 'putting a toe in the water' rather than for those who wish to move beyond the first steps, but is useful at the level to which it is pitched. It helps to contest the pernicious myth that business profitability and environmental responsibility are at odds with each other.

Rating:
Summary: Lean and Green:Profit for Your Workplace and the Environment
Review: This is a book on being productive in the workplace and also being kind to this earth of ours. In this "how to do it" book the author instructs by real life examples from industry, the way that drives home the message like no other way. I wouldn't be surprised if the book is used as a college textbook in the future in the catagory of environmental studies. Her book has come out at a time of the recent national tragedy that we are suffering as an effort to protect our way of life and the earth as opposed to those who would destroy them both.

Rating:
Summary: Should Be Mandatory Reading For All Manufacturing Executives
Review: This well-researched and thoughtful work is a very readable and practical guide proving that integrating environmentally-friendly processes and procedures in manufacturing operations is not only necessary for code compliance and corporate public relations, but can also improve companies' financial performance. Ms. Gordon provides real world examples showing how some of the world's largest and best-known companies have taken profitable steps toward improving our environment while at the same time improving their bottom line.