Waste... Not

WorldChanging points us to an interesting article from Wired that profiles several companies operating near-zero waste plants. What's driving this move towards zero waste is not necessarily the good public relations that comes from "going green" (though that's certainly a factor), but the lowered costs of "reduce, reuse, recycle":

"Anything that's waste is an inefficiency in the process, and inefficiency is lost dollars," says Patricia Calkins, vice president for environment, health and safety at Xerox.

Skyrocketing landfill costs during the late 1980s and early 1990s helped make that clear to companies. The average cost to dump a ton of garbage in a U.S. landfill jumped from $8 in 1985 to $34 in 1995, according to the National Solid Wastes Management Association.

Landfill costs have climbed only slightly since then, but in parts of the country where land is at a premium, companies can pay far higher rates. It costs Fetzer Vineyards $61 a ton to dump its trash, says Patrick Healy, the company's environmental manager. Cutting its waste stream has saved the winemaker an estimated $150,000.

At the same time, though, environmental awareness does play into these company's considerations:

Skyrocketing landfill costs during the late 1980s and early 1990s helped make that clear to companies. The average cost to dump a ton of garbage in a U.S. landfill jumped from $8 in 1985 to $34 in 1995, according to the National Solid Wastes Management Association.

Landfill costs have climbed only slightly since then, but in parts of the country where land is at a premium, companies can pay far higher rates. It costs Fetzer Vineyards $61 a ton to dump its trash, says Patrick Healy, the company's environmental manager. Cutting its waste stream has saved the winemaker an estimated $150,000.

There's also far greater awareness of the risks of dumping garbage. Much of that awareness has come from the publicity around Superfund sites and industrial landfills gone bad, says David Lear, HP's vice president of corporate, social and environmental responsibility. "We've seen too many companies who didn't think through what they were putting in the ground," he says. "It may have been done legally at the time, but it's come back to haunt them.

"So even if we feel that a material is benign, we're very hesitant to put anything in the ground," Lear says. "We believe it's worth paying a couple of pennies today to avoid any sort of environmental risk down the line."

These cases make a good argument for encouraging an economic approach to environmental management, but also for aggressive prosecution of environmental "crimes" -- clearly, these companies are responding both to the cost-savings created by cradle to cradle thinking, but also to potential liabilities that arise from polluting.

Technorati tags: business, waste, cradle to cradle, economics