Greening Your Supply Chain Begins At The Bottom - Underneath It All Is Your Pallet

Most people believe change starts at the top. But when it comes to greening your supply chain, change really starts at the bottom. What's beneath all that change? It starts with your choice of pallets. The one ubiquitous platform that moves nearly everything that moves.

Pallets may seem alike, but they're not. Some are environmental champions while others are environmental villains.

The new plastic pallet whose eco-claim is based on their recyclability is really a baseless claim because it is well documented that plastic has a heavy environmental footprint. Anything based on a petro-chemical usually does. From the oil well, to the oil tanker, to the plastic processing plant, plastic can be green in color only.

Wooden pallets on the other hand have been treating the environment well since the pallet first appeared. As long as they are not made from virgin hardwoods, wooden pallets are often the greenest part of any supply chain.

They start out as the unusable trim from the lumbering process, the trim parts that would otherwise end up in landfills. Once made, they get used, reused, repaired and recycled. When they're no longer useable, they get ground up into garden mulch so they keep on greening even after they're gone.

Now that we've got that down, let's move up the supply chain.

The first thing to remember when trying to green up your supply chain is that there is probably a greener alternative to everything you're doing right now. From the labels on your products, to the way you print them, to what you're putting them on. Take a long hard, honest look at what you're doing, what you're receiving and what you're accepting from your vendors as part of your manufacturing process and you're guaranteed to find room for "green" improvement.

Is there a greener alternative to the bottles you're using? There have been a lot of interesting additions to the world of containers including bottles made from corn. They biodegrade so they don't end up as the Methuselah (he lived for 969 years) of the landfill.

What about your labels, can they be printed on recycled paper with soy based inks? What about your packaging? Are you using "secondary packaging" -- that's a package within a package, if you don't have to? Habitual practices are not always the best ones. Think about it this way, any reductions in packaging is an automatic increase to your bottom line.

Are your trucks going out full or half full? Ask yourself if your deliveries are gassed or half-gassed, I think you know what I mean. Fuel charges and energy use can be sharply reduced if you deliver full loads.

UPS recently instituted a program and delivery map that allows their trucks to make far fewer left turns and this has vastly increased their fuel efficiencies. Are you recycling your wooden pallets and making sure they don't get tossed or lost? The more we repair, reuse and recycle, the less additional resources are used.

Next, look around your own physical plant. Are you using energy saving light bulbs? Wal-Mart announced that this one change saved them more than $7 million. That turned out to be a pretty bright idea for them. What you'll find is that once you turn a green eye to everything you do you'll naturally start doing everything a little bit better.

Here are some more tips you might not have thought about that can turn green in more ways than one.

-Can you do a face to face via your computer? You'll save driving time, employee time and be more efficient by phone and computer instead of driving and you won't have to spring for the coffee.
-Can you host a presentation using Webcams instead of driving to the airport and flying to a meeting? You'll not only save the cost of travel but you won't have to buy a bag of those stale peanuts.
-Can you send PDF files over the Internet instead of printing brochures?
-Can you place your marketing materials on a flash drive and hand them out at a trade show instead of leaving a paper trail?
-Can you allow your employees to telecommute a portion of their work week?
-Can you send your company holiday cards via the Internet instead of using paper and post?
-And what about work space health? Is your flooring off-gassing harmful VOC's (volatile organic compounds)into your work space air?
-Do you use nontoxic cleaning products? All of these things contribute to healthier work spaces, which contribute to greater worker productivity and a better bottom line.
-Can you source bleach-free recycled paper and print on both sides?
-Can you print on your outgoing e-mails, "Please do not print this e-mail unless you really must?"
-Are you letting your trucks idle at pick-up and delivery if they don't have to?
-Could your next fleet purchase be hybrids? You'll be amazed how much you can save in fuel and energy costs alone.

Greening your supply chain is an ongoing, highly creative process that starts by greening your thinking first. It takes a little adjustment to your reflexes to ask yourself questions like, "Do I have to print that e-mail?" That little act alone, when multiplied by 200 e-mails a day, five days a week for a year, can save a lot of trees and money.

Here's another good example of green thinking. Simply reducing the margins of your documents to .75" on all sides, results in a total reduction of paper use by 4.75 percent, according to a study by Penn State Green Destiny Conservatree. For one ton of paper, the savings would be 19 reams, which then saves 1.4 trees. Multiplying that by 5.4 million tons of office paper, which is the amount the United States consumed in 2003, saves 6,158,000 trees. Not to mention the energy costs and waste products generated:

-1,459,535,366 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to CO2 emissions from 132,528 cars.
-584,398,539 pounds of solid waste, equaling 20,871 fully loaded garbage trucks.
-4.8 billion gallons of wastewater, enough to fill 7,408 Olympic-sized pools.

You see, one margin can go a long way.

Once you start greening up from the bottom up, you'll see how much stress you can take off your bottom line and the environment. And think of this, you'll be able to make yourself look good to all your clients who have made the environment part of their environment. Next sales call, you'll be able to say "we're so green, even our pallets are eco friendly." You'll make your competition green with envy.