Social Entrepreneurship & Social Responsibility of Business, General & Heavy Industry - Pollution Control & Waste Management, Marketing Products, Environmental Engineering - General & Miscellaneous

The E-Factor : Turning Environmental Responsibility into Good, Green Profits

Name: The E-Factor : Turning Environmental Responsibility into Good, Green Profits
Author: Joel Makower
ISBN: 9780812920574

by Joel Makower

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Overview

The E-Factor presents a powerful, positive, and pragmatic approach to corporate America's single greatest challenge for the coming century: improving the environment along with the bottom line. It embraces two notions central to the world's cleanest companies: reducing waste and maximizing resources. Joel Makower, author of the bestselling Green Consumer, shows how companies that do these two things can be more competitive and profitable over the long run. Makower describes the six Es central to the most successful corporate environmental initiatives. Economics, Enforcement, Empowerment, Education, Efficiency and Excellence. He shows that integrating some or all of these factors into everyday decision making can enhance a company's profile, productivity, and profits. Included are portraits of successful environmental programs at dozens of companies that are making a difference, including Ace Hardware, American Airlines, AT&T, Boeing, Church and Dwight, Dow Chemical, Eastman Kodak, Esprit, B. F. Goodrich, Intel, Lockheed, MCI, Nordstrom, Pacific Gas & Electric, Polaroid, and Xerox. These are among the growing number of companies leading the corporate environmental revolution, whether educating and empowering employees to become waste reducers and pollution watchdogs; leaning on suppliers to create more environmentally sound products and services; working creatively with customers, competitors, and communities to create win/win solutions to environmental problems; finding new and innovative solutions to polluting and wasteful practices; or bringing ecology into Total Quality Management programs. In addition, The E-Factor describes in understandable terms the key concepts today's managers must understand to tackle tomorrow's environmental challenges, including "green taxes," "smog futures," and other market-oriented approaches to regulation being embraced by governments around the world - including the new administration in Washington.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Integrating concern for the environment as a regular business practice can be as economical as it is ecological, maintains Makower ( The Green Consumer ) in this sweeping, dispassionate and heartening survey of ``green'' activity in mainstream industry. He describes official disincentives: corporate managers responsible for industrial pollution draw increasingly stiff jail terms as the FBI joins activists and whistleblowers in tracking down violators. For the most part, however, Makower's approach is positive. He explains how such companies as Lockheed, 3M and Xerox cut toxic emissions, reduce waste and boost energy efficiency. He also salutes the enterprising: a furniture maker incinerates wood scraps and sawdust to heat his plant in winter and cool it in summer; an airline flight attendant organizes an industrywide recycling network. Encouraging environmental responsibility, Makower concludes, brings unexpected benefits in employee morale, public relations and profit margins. Author tour. (Mar.)

Library Journal

The essence of being green is to minimize waste and use of resources. Makower ( The Green Consumer , Viking, 1991, and The Green Commuter , LJ 2/15/92) instructs companies on how to approach the ``environment factor'' in terms of economics, enforcement, empowerment, education, efficiency, and excellence. Using an anecdotal format, he quotes executives and describes programs that allow companies to comply. Much of Makower's attention goes to potential cost savings, a subject near and dear to the heart of executives. Communication with ``stakeholders,'' who include anyone with an interest in what the company does, are considered crucial. Makower provides enough concrete examples of projects actually undertaken by business to allow most readers to find something to use. Also, he offers brief guidelines for applying trendy programs like Total Quality Management and benchmarking. This book would interest businesspeople, rather than those seeking general environmental information.-- Sue McKimm, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, Ohio

Barbara Jacobs

In a very thoughtful, nonexcoriating fashion, Makower, a writer-researcher now indelibly linked with environmentalism ("The Green Consumer, 50 Simple Things Your Business Can Do to Save the Earth"), sets forth some very persuasive and practical how-tos for corporations desiring to go green. Understanding that his audience needs reasons for adopting good Earth practices, he starts with the rationale, using an impressive array of facts and case histories to buttress his economic and legal reasons (for example, in 1992, companies spent $115 billion complying with environmental regulations). Most useful are his four sections on the process of going green, from empowerment and education to efficiency and excellence. Throughout, he talks of the bottom line (Arm & Hammer's increase in baking soda sales is but one example), of found monies in waste (eggshells are transformed into calcium and protein supplement for chicken feeds), of right-now tips that will start to make a difference in saving planet Earth. His most valuable contribution? The first rule in his afterword: Don't try to become perfectly green.