CHAPTER 10
Stepping Up at Work
There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth.
We are all crew.
—Marshall McLuhan
Jobs in the United States are as diverse as the nation's people: some of us work in offices, others in stores, factories, restaurants, or hospitals. Some are employed by large corporations, and others are sole proprietors of small businesses or consultancies. But no matter what your job is or where you do it, you can help reduce emissions at work. Small changes can make a big difference when they are widely adopted. Our workplaces offer a powerful venue to magnify the impact of the effective climate choices we make as individuals.
From manufacturing to retail, companies large and small are waking up to the issue of global warming and sometimes taking meaningful steps to address it. To be sure, some companies are too shortsighted to invest in improving their energy efficiency even when doing so would yield savings within months. Others would rather boast about how “green” they are than make substantive changes. But many firms are realizing how much goodwill they can generate—and how much money they can save—by finding ways to lower their carbon emissions. Wherever you work, you can play a part in encouraging your employer and coworkers along this path.
Scaling Up Reductions
By helping your workplace make effective climate choices, you can take your know-how to a bigger stage. When a large corporation or organization institutes company-wide changes, it can make a huge difference in driving down overall emissions as well as leading the way for other businesses. Take, for instance, the chemical manufacturing company DuPont. Inspired by scientific consensus on the urgency and magnitude of the threat from global warming—and undoubtedly motivated to turn energy savings into shareholder profits—DuPont decided to invest in more energy-efficient processes and equipment, renewable energy, and other emissions-reducing approaches. Between 1990 and 2006, the company managed to cut its worldwide heat-trapping emissions to 72 percent below 1990 levels, reducing its energy use by 7 percent even while production expanded by 30 percent. As a result of its efforts, DuPont saved roughly $2 billion in energy costs.
The power of scale is evident in some of the climate choices made over the past several years by the retail giant Walmart. One of the largest corporations in the world, Walmart consumes more electricity annually than any other private user in the United States. So when the company pledged in 2007 to reduce its electricity usage by 20 percent by 2013, that meant lowering its usage by some 3.5 million megawatt-hours. That's nearly enough to permanently shutter an entire midsized coal-fired power plant and keep close to 4 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere annually.
In her useful book The Green Workplace, Leigh Stringer recounts the story of an employee at Google who decided to take action when he realized that all of the kitchens and break rooms at the company's campus in Mountain View, California, were stocked with bottled water. Recognizing the practice as environmentally wasteful, in part because of the carbon emissions caused by transporting the water, the Google worker started an employee petition to urge the company to offer tap water instead. Within a week, he had collected over 2,000 signatures. At its headquarters alone, it turned out, Google was buying roughly 13,000 bottles of water per day and spending over $1 million annually. As a result of the petition drive, this single worker—with the help of his petition-signing colleagues—was able to get Google to stop buying bottled water for all of its North American offices.
UCS Climate Team FAST FACT
Corporate decisions can have huge impacts. Walmart's pledge to cut its electricity usage by 20 percent by 2013 meant reducing annual energy usage by some 3.5 million megawatt-hours. That's nearly enough to permanently shutter a midsized coal-fired power plant and keep close to 4 million tons of CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere annually.
You don't have to work at a giant corporation to make effective—and significant—climate choices at work. Tom Bowman, the owner and proprietor of the Bowman Design Group, a small California-based company that designs exhibits for corporations and museums, offers a good case in point. After designing an exhibit on climate change for the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, Bowman decided he wanted to address global warming in his own work life. He realized, though, that he didn't know the most effective steps to take. He thought about installing solar panels but found them too expensive for his budget and their payoff period too long.
After getting an energy audit, Bowman made the following changes. He redid the office lighting, saving some $300 annually on the firm's electric bill. He bought power strips to turn equipment off at night and avoid phantom loads. He traded in the company's SUV for a hybrid Prius. He bought energy-efficient equipment, including the most efficient air conditioner he could afford. The results of Bowman's actions were dramatic: he cut his firm's gasoline use by 63 percent, cut landfill waste by 45 percent, and reduced electricity costs by 40 percent. Altogether, he reduced his firm's carbon emissions by 65 percent.
Bowman's changes also saved about $9,000 annually, an amount he hopes to apply to making further energy efficiency upgrades. He recognizes that his firm's 13-ton reduction in emissions may seem insignificant compared with the scale of emissions at large corporations, but he says the comparison misses the point. “In the end,” Bowman says, “these reductions were absurdly easy to achieve, and they pay dividends. Duplicating them across the nation's 29.6 million small businesses would yield significant gains.”
UCS Climate Team FAST FACT
The proprietor of one small California-based design firm found that by making some simple changes he was able to cut his firm's emissions by 65 percent, its gasoline use by 63 percent, its landfill waste by 45 percent, and its costs for electricity by 40 percent. The changes, which he calls “absurdly easy,” saved the firm some $9,000 annually.
Reductions at Work Start with You
Even if you—re not at the top of a major corporation or a small company, you can still make a difference at your workplace. Not only can you help reduce your organization's global warming emissions; you are also likely to improve its bottom line. Many people mistakenly believe that organizations and companies have to choose between economic and environmental considerations. But in fact, the opposite is more often true: making effective and sustainable climate choices often means doing more with less—exactly the kind of thinking that helps businesses maximize their profits.
The information offered in this book can help you suggest a number of changes that could help your workplace save money while reducing emissions. Approaching the issue from a cost-savings perspective can pave the way for other kinds of emissions reductions, too, such as commuting programs, which have less effect on the company's bottom line.
A good way to start is by learning about any environmental efforts already being made at your workplace. Ask your boss or human resources representative whether your organization has an energy or sustainability task force. If so, find out how you can join its efforts. If not, see if you can be a catalyst for starting a “green team” at work. You'll probably find it easier than you might think to get others to join in. Ask around or send an e-mail to find other workers who are concerned about climate or energy issues. Then set up a time at lunch or after work to get everyone together to brainstorm about what projects might make the most sense for your organization.
Figure 10.1. Thinking Through Your Organization's Environmental Practices
One useful approach is to think about the tasks you perform each day at work. As you think over each one, ask yourself whether you might be able to do more with less energy or resources.
Next, apply the same set of questions to the tasks performed by your immediate work group or department and expand out from there to the organization as a whole. Of course, the particulars will vary a lot, depending on the type of work you do, but the table offers some suggestions about the kinds of questions to ask. You won't have all the answers right away; at this point, what's most important is to start asking useful questions to identify opportunities for emissions reductions in all the work processes throughout your organization.
Measure Current Usage
Once you and your coworkers have identified some areas or processes that are ripe for improvements in efficiency, you'll need information on how much your organization currently spends on energy. That information will allow you to build a strong case for reducing energy usage and give you a baseline to judge how effective your suggestions ultimately are. Something as simple as getting permission to have the local utility company conduct an energy audit of your office or business, for example, can reveal a number of low- or no-cost options that can save money and reduce emissions.
Such measurements often yield a lot of useful information. When the software maker Adobe installed digital smart meters to monitor electricity use at its California facilities, the information yielded results right away. It turned out that the utility charged for electricity on the basis of Adobe's peak usage during the day, so all the company needed to do to lower costs was stagger the times when office systems were turned on each day to avoid a spike in usage. Implementing that one change more than repaid the company's modest investment to install the smart meters. Shifting electricity demand to a different time of day doesn't reduce overall usage, but it can lower costs somewhat. And from an environmental point of view, it can avoid the utility's use of dirtier plants that are turned on only for high peaks.
Educate Your Coworkers
Getting your coworkers on board will help immeasurably as you work to change environmental practices at your workplace. People are usually open to adopting more energy-efficient practices—many just haven't thought much about the issue. Everyone is busy, of course, and few people have taken the time to learn the details of complex topics such as global warming and energy efficiency.
There are lots of ways to help educate coworkers and get them more involved. If it is an accepted practice at your workplace, try bringing in a lunchtime speaker to talk about the link between energy use and the environment. Solicit ideas from your coworkers or connect with community groups working on climate change, and build bridges between your organizations. You might try partnering with a group on an Earth Day activity; if your employer encourages employee fitness, you might organize a Bike to Work or Carpool Month or some other low-key project to get the conversation started.
Use Incentives and Competition
As you and your green team begin to suggest ways to reduce the company's carbon footprint, remember that the most successful strategies are often those that seem more like fun than work. The last thing our coworkers need is to feel that we are adding to their workload. Look into possible incentives for the kinds of changes you are trying to encourage. Some companies, for instance, give the best parking spots to the most efficient cars, such as hybrids. Others offer gift cards or small cash rewards to employees who take public transportation to work or suggest improvements the company can make in its environmental practices. Perhaps your organization can offer perks to encourage employees to make effective climate choices.
In addition to incentives, competition can be a very effective strategy. Try organizing a race between departments or work groups to see which one can achieve the biggest reductions in emissions. One innovative website, www.carbonrally.com, will even help your organization launch such a competition, turning the act of lowering emissions into a game in which teams take on challenges, ranging from pledging to reduce paper use by 25 percent to leaving their cars at home for a week. Organizations as disparate as the Sharp Corporation, the Massachusetts Bar Association, and the staff of Seventeen magazine have participated in Carbonrally challenges.
Reward Results
Whenever possible, urge your employer to reward ideas offered for more sustainable practices. After all, companies are increasingly finding that employee involvement in sustainability issues pays off. Xerox, for instance, has a program to solicit its employees’ green ideas, offering highly prized Earth Awards to recognize the best sustainability ideas each year. In 2010, Xerox lauded the work of a team at its Oregon facility that designed a more sustainable package—made from 100 percent postconsumer recycled material—for one of the company's lines of colored ink. Xerox also recognized a team at a factory in upstate New York that devised a more efficient process for handling wastewater, cutting the plant's waste by 60 percent and saving some $80,000 annually. All told, in 2010 alone Xerox implemented employee suggestions that reduced carbon emissions and eliminated some 2.6 million pounds of waste, saving the company roughly $10 million.
UCS Climate Team FAST FACT
Companies are increasingly finding that employee-generated ideas about sustainability can pay off. Xerox recognizes employees’ best sustainability ideas with its coveted annual Earth Award. In 2010, employees’ suggestions reduced the company's carbon emissions and eliminated some 2.6 million pounds of waste, saving roughly $10 million.
Greening Healthcare
One sector that is starting to reduce its sizable carbon footprint is healthcare. The fact is, the nation's nearly 6,000 hospitals are among its most energy-intensive commercial sector buildings, using twice as much total energy per square foot as most other commercial buildings. Taken together, the nation's hospitals also generate upward of 7,000 tons of waste per day.
Across the country, healthcare providers are finding themselves at the center of a movement to embrace sustainable practices in the workplace. Part of this involvement stems from their mission as health professionals. According to estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for instance, the U.S. health sector's 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity usage (more than enough to provide electricity to all the residents of two cities the size of Houston) is responsible for additional cases of asthma, respiratory illness, and hospital emergency room visits totaling some $600 million per year in increased health costs.
The healthcare industry is so large—accounting for some 16 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product—that any changes made in this sector can reap big rewards. If you work in this field (as one in nine Americans currently does), you probably know that hospital administrators and other healthcare professionals are quite aware of the billions of dollars they could collectively save by reducing energy use, not to mention the huge potential reduction in global warming emissions. Many hospitals are starting to actively pursue sustainable strategies across all aspects of their operations, ranging from energy efficiency and recycling to newer trends such as maximizing daylight in new buildings.
Interdisciplinary green teams, comprising physicians, nurses, and other staff, are being set up at many hospitals to brainstorm ideas for new initiatives. And a growing number of hospitals have hired sustainability coordinators to monitor inputs and waste and to oversee green projects.
Thanks to these kinds of efforts, a wealth of information is starting to emerge, much of which can be helpful for other workplaces as well. The World Health Organization, for example, produced an influential report outlining the “seven elements of a climate-friendly hospital,” with recommendations on energy efficiency, green building design, alternative energy, transportation, food, waste, and water supplies.
In the United States, the organization Practice Greenhealth offers a wide array of information on sustainability issues particularly geared to the healthcare field. Among its offerings is the Green Guide for Health Care (available for download at www.gghc.org), which gives detailed recommendations on best practices in hospital design, operations, waste management, purchasing, and other areas.
The effects of this kind of work are evident already. The Cleveland Clinic, a large Ohio-based hospital, for example, has won multiple environmental awards for dramatically increasing its recycling and achieving a 20 percent reduction in its energy usage over the past three years alone.
Other hospitals are opting to purchase renewable energy to power their operations. York Hospital, in York, Maine, for example, gets 90 percent of its energy from carbon-free sources, including wind power and hydropower. As a result, despite enlarging its operations, the hospital cut carbon emissions by more than one-quarter over the past several years, keeping more than 300 tons of emissions out of the atmosphere.
UCS Climate Team FAST FACT
The nation's nearly 6,000 hospitals use twice as much total energy per square foot as most other commercial buildings and generate a total of 7,000 tons of waste per day. The organization Practice Greenhealth offers a wealth of information on sustainability issues geared to the healthcare field, including the Green Guide for Health Care, which provides detailed recommendations on best environmental practices.
Green Building
As is true in our homes, an organization can make some of the most significant emissions reductions through green building—either in retrofitting an existing facility or in building a new one. Nationwide, some 40 percent of all emissions come from our buildings, including residences and public and commercial buildings. If your company or organization is building a new facility or renovating an older one, try to get involved during the very early planning stages to encourage the inclusion of energy-efficient features. Remember that any decisions about a new or upgraded facility will lock in its energy usage—and emissions—for years, if not decades, to come.
One of the most important considerations in any building project is construction cost. So it's notable that a widely recognized 2007 study by the international construction consulting firm Davis Langdon found no significant difference between average construction costs for green buildings and those built conventionally. Meanwhile, many studies have shown that the lower operating costs and higher market advantage of a green facility enhance its value substantially. In other words, it costs little or no more to build in energy efficiency, and doing so will pay dividends to your organization for the life of the building.
The EPA's Energy Star program offers a rating system for buildings along with a detailed Building Upgrade Manual, available at the agency's website (www.energystar.gov). Residential and commercial buildings that are judged by a third party to be 15 percent more energy efficient than average can qualify to receive the agency's Energy Star rating.
ASK THE EXPERTS
What Is a LEED-Certified Building?
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a widely adopted certification program begun in 1998 to encourage builders, architects, and home buyers to adopt environmentally sustainable building practices.
LEED operates on a credit and point system. The system is divided into 13 sustainability categories, such as water efficiency and indoor environmental quality, each of which carries a certain number of credits; each credit earns one or more points, for a possible total of 100 points. LEED recognizes four rating levels, depending on the number of points earned: certified, silver, gold, and platinum. In this way the program takes a complex, multifaceted problem and incentivizes a variety of sustainable features.
The ratings that builders and architects can earn are recognized by the real estate market, offering a mark of prestige similar to the certification of the Energy Star program for appliances. And LEED has raised awareness of the environmental implications of construction practices, instigating enormous activity in green real estate around the country. More information about LEED is available from the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org).
An even more detailed guide to making sustainable design choices is a certification program called LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, overseen by the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council. Begun in 1998, the LEED program is designed to encourage builders, architects, and home buyers to adopt environmentally sustainable building practices. With more than 21,000 buildings around the world currently certified by LEED and another 88,000, including some 31,000 commercial buildings, now working their way through the certification process, the program is clearly spurring advances in green building techniques; each successive version of the program has greatly improved its system of credits and sophistication.
Awareness of green construction practices and of the environmental impact of buildings is on the rise, and research indicates that LEED certification is already a highly desirable attribute in the real estate market. While the results are still preliminary, some studies of the commercial real estate market have shown that LEED-certified buildings are selling for more, commanding higher rents, and showing higher occupancy rates than their less efficient counterparts.
In addition to saving money and reducing emissions, a green building project can make a powerful public statement about your organization's commitment to sustainability. Examples of the positive influence of green building abound, including many at colleges and universities, where flagship environmental buildings set an important example for students, faculty, and the public. When Oberlin College in Ohio built a new facility for its Environmental Sciences Program in 2000, the school decided to make the building a showcase for the kind of sustainable thinking featured in the environmental science classes. The award-winning Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies has been recognized as one of the most advanced examples of sustainable architecture in the United States. The building includes solar photovoltaic panels, geothermal heating and cooling, and even a “living machine” greenhouse system to recycle the building's wastewater. Some 150 monitoring systems provide information to a real-time display in the lobby, showing visitors that the building often produces more energy than it consumes.
Buildings such as the one at Oberlin, which was begun before the LEED certification system was established, no doubt inspire and encourage others to follow suit. Today, some 678 colleges have signed an agreement pledging to make all future buildings at their schools sustainable at the LEED Silver level of certification or better and to work toward reaching carbon neutrality at their campuses.
Of course, showcase facilities have been built for commercial enterprises as well. A grocery store built by Whole Foods Market in Dedham, Massachusetts, offers one such example. The facility demonstrates the company's forward-thinking energy and sustainability practices to customers, employees, and investors, as well as the local community. The store was constructed from recycled steel and many other recycled materials, incorporates a “cool roof” for energy efficiency, meets 90 percent of the store's energy needs with a fuel cell and photovoltaic solar panels, and recycles or reuses some 80 percent of its waste. The Dedham store—one of the company's 10 LEED-certified stores—demonstrates a broader commitment by the firm, which now stands among the largest corporate users of renewable energy, having purchased renewable energy credits for wind energy to cover 100 percent of the company's electricity needs.
Figure 10.2. Total Number of Registered LEED Buildings, 2000–2010
As of 2010, some 31,454 commercial buildings were working toward LEED certification worldwide.
Source: U.S. Green Building Council, 2011.
Companies and organizations that take prominent steps to lower their emissions and build sustainable facilities should feel justified in communicating their accomplishments to their customers. Unfortunately, however, some companies have recognized that espousing green rhetoric in advertisements can be an effective marketing strategy even when they have little to show for their claims.
Take, for instance, the coal industry's branding of its latest technology as “clean coal,” which is anything but a clean energy source. Or the advertising over the past several years by the oil company BP stressing its commitment to renewable energy with the tagline “Beyond Petroleum,” even though the company's investments in renewable energy are very small relative to their investments in oil and gas. Examples of “greenwashing” are common among consumer products as well. Kimberly-Clark famously touts a line of disposable diapers as Pure & Natural Huggies, advertising the use of organic cotton even though the diapers, almost identical to regular Huggies, include only a small amount of cotton on the outside. The Pure & Natural line also boasts of packaging made with “20 percent recycled content,” whereas many manufacturers of consumer products today routinely use 100 percent recycled packaging without even mentioning it. Other forms of greenwashing are more subtle. Clairol prominently advertises its Herbal Essence shampoo as “a truly organic experience,” even though it is made almost entirely of the same chemical ingredients as most other shampoos.
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How Do I Know If a Company's Claims Are Just Greenwashing?
“Greenwashing,” the environmental equivalent of whitewashing, refers to an all-too-common practice by a company or organization: presenting misleading information about its environmental policies or the environmental benefits of its products or services. Because environmentally sustainable products and practices are popular, companies may be tempted to tout themselves as “green” even if their actions don't live up to the image they portray. Watch out for companies that
- tout tiny “eco-friendly” projects (like planting a few trees) while most of their business is environmentally destructive or carbon intensive;
- make claims that aren't substantiated by a reliable source or third-party certification;
- advertise “green” commitments while lobbying against environmental laws and regulations;
- make claims so broad or vague as to have no real meaning;
- exaggerate their environmental achievements to cover up for bad behavior or public relations problems in other areas.
When it comes to company-sponsored statements about sustainable practices, it's smart to study them with a healthy dose of skepticism. Seek out third-party verification if possible, and look for solid evidence that companies are actually living up to the environmental values they espouse. It's not always easy to separate fact from corporate hype, but organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists can help you stay informed about this kind of corporate hypocrisy. Every other year, for instance, the organization publishes an “Automaker Rankings” report, highlighting which companies “walk the walk” when it comes to the environmental performance of their vehicles. Two websites—www.sourcewatch.org and www.stopgreenwash.org—also have useful information about greenwashing.
You may well have spotted examples like these yourself. While discerning consumers can often tell the difference, this kind of greenwashing has become fairly pervasive. As the box suggests, we can each help make sure our organizations—and the companies we patronize—actually engage in substantive efforts to reduce emissions, not just talk about them.
Transparency and Accountability
One way to avoid concerns about greenwashing is to institute greater transparency and accountability. As with all the work that must be done at home and in our communities to reduce global warming emissions, an important step is to measure current emissions. Several nongovernmental organizations around the world have launched programs to encourage companies to measure and publicly report their emissions data. Consider urging your firm to join one of these projects if it hasn't already.
Some of the work on getting companies to report emissions was begun decades ago by Ceres, a nonprofit organization founded by a small group of investors in 1989 in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Ceres continues as a national coalition of investors, environmental organizations, and other public interest groups that works with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global warming emissions. It runs the Global Reporting Initiative, a voluntary registry in which companies disclose data about their use of materials and water as well as the associated waste and emissions they create.
Perhaps the largest such reporting program geared specifically to global warming is the UK-based Carbon Disclosure Project, which publishes emissions data for some 3,000 of the world's major businesses. Of the 500 largest companies in the world, 409 volunteered emissions data in 2010, the most in any year so far. The Carbon Disclosure Project is making an important contribution by publishing a good deal of data that have never before been publicly available. It is, however, a voluntary program, and the data are based on companies’ self-reporting in response to the project's detailed survey.
Other projects seek to publish more verifiable data. One in North America, the Climate Registry (www.theclimateregistry.org), began in 2009 and is sponsored by various agencies and nonprofit organizations, including the EPA and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), formerly the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The registry requires that the emissions data it publishes be verified by an accredited third party. Already the registry has more than 200 founding members, including corporations, utilities, and nonprofit organizations. Other such reporting programs include the Greenhouse Gas Protocol initiative (www.ghgprotocol.org); the UK-based Carbon Trust (www.carbontrust.co.uk); the Climate Savers Program, administered by the World Wildlife Fund (information at www.worldwildlife.org); and the Climate-Safe Business Network, run by the World Resources Institute. In addition, a growing number of private consulting groups offer to help companies develop carbon reduction and other sustainable development programs.
These programs offer companies the chance to establish public benchmarks as they work to operate more sustainably. As the programs have evolved, they have brought unprecedented transparency to the entire supply chain, allowing companies to know more about their suppliers’ climate-related practices. Because many large corporations manufacture products in developing nations, where emissions are rising rapidly, this information should help reduce emissions all along the supply chain.
UCS Climate Team FAST FACT
A number of voluntary reporting projects, such as the UK-based Carbon Disclosure Project (www.cdproject.net), ask companies to disclose their global warming emissions, setting public benchmarks to encourage improvements in their performance. Even though the reporting is voluntary and mostly unverified, more than 3,000 organizations worldwide now submit emissions data to the Carbon Disclosure Project, including 409 of the world's 500 largest companies, as of 2010.
One company that has led in tracking emissions throughout its supply chain is the computer maker Dell, which currently receives information about global warming emissions from all of its primary suppliers. As part of its effort, Dell has set clear goals for its suppliers, asking them to publicly establish targets for carbon reductions and to incorporate their own suppliers into the program as well.
Walmart is another large and influential corporation that focuses on reducing emissions throughout its supply chain. Walmart asks suppliers to assess their carbon footprints in each of four categories: energy and climate, material efficiency, nature and resources, and people and community. The company then scores suppliers to determine whether they have reached targets it has set in each category. While not mandatory, this program has increased carbon consciousness in many suppliers since it was put in place. Given the sheer number of Walmart's suppliers—some 60,000'such a supply chain effort can have sizable consequences.
Putting It All Together
Once you have helped spur your workplace to reduce emissions and encouraged it to report its progress and, perhaps, track the emissions of its suppliers, your organization will no doubt realize the benefits of operating more efficiently. Companies and organizations around the world are doing more than ever before to reduce their carbon footprints and operate sustainably.
We still have a long way to go, however. It's time to think big. Now we need to figure out how to fully close the loop on our activities by designing for reuse, recycling, and “remanufacturing” and by operating in the most sustainable ways possible.
That might sound like pie in the sky, but to a remarkable extent this larger vision is starting to be realized in a variety of industries. Some countries, such as Germany and Japan, are far ahead of the United States in this regard, with laws requiring that products such as automobiles, household appliances, and office equipment be designed for easy disassembly and recycling.
Some U.S. corporations are already doing it. Patagonia, a retailer of outdoor gear and an environmental leader, has launched a clothing recycling program for its polyester fleece garments, for example. The company now recycles not only its own polyester garments but also those sold by its competitors. Because a fleece garment made from recycled polyester is indistinguishable from one that contains virgin polyester, made from petroleum, Patagonia has recognized that it can make garments from recycled fleece with less than one-quarter of the energy needed to make new fabric.
The Atlanta-based carpet manufacturer Interface offers another example. Using an innovative design process, Interface lowered its carbon emissions by some 35 percent from its 1996 baseline and decreased the energy consumed per square yard of carpeting by 45 percent. This achievement is part of a broader vision for sustainability that the company's founder, the late Ray Anderson, and his team parlayed into a global leadership position in the carpet tile industry, with a pledge to become a carbon-neutral company by 2020.
Farsighted efforts such as these point the way toward the prospect of greatly reduced emissions. As promising as these efforts are, however, the truth is that voluntary projects by a handful of individual companies will not drive down emissions as quickly or as far as we need them to go. Government incentives and standards for better practices as well as limits on pollution are the final, and critical, piece of the emissions puzzle. That's what we will explore in the next chapters, including what you can do to spur the government to implement the policies we need now to combat global warming.