The two main business levers for making industrial operations more profitable are increasing productivity, and controlling costs. A thoughtfully prepared environmental plan can help you make gains in both areas – including the “hidden” aspect of cost control – risk management.
Risk management is exceedingly important for environmental plans, because all your cost controls don’t help if you face a multi-million dollar lawsuit. But the very fact that you have a documented environmental management plan and processes takes you a long way towards managing that risk.
A solid environmental plan also identifies areas of waste, and that leads to both increased productivity per unit of raw materials, and lower materials cost. Win-win. Also in this category is containment of hazardous waste. The risk management applied here decreases potential down-time, and increases employee safety.
So it’s clear that an environmental plan can be a useful tool in both managing costs and increasing productivity. Developing a plan that provides for continual improvement goals and monitoring can be an ongoing initiative to improve working conditions and profitability. We do love these win-win scenarios!
