College of
Business
Administration
College of
Business
Administration
Bierworth, Sandy
P2: The Pollution Prevention Experts: Consulting Firm Asks Questions to Help Industries Save Time, Money, Materials,
The Brockville Recorder & Times (Ontario, Canada), June 3, 2004
For many industries, reducing waste and pollution has been a priority. But with waste disposal and hydro costs on the rise and air quality becoming an even greater concern, cleaning up our environment has never been more critical.
Of course, the first step is to reduce, recycle and reuse as much as possible. But many companies have procedures that have been in place for years, and often don't realize that a simple and cost-effective change can make a huge difference.
That's where David Clunas comes in. The Toronto-based environmental consultant visits industrial sites to come up with ways a company can initiate something called Pollution Prevention, or P2 Planning.
"Pollution Prevention planning is a way of looking at your site and your industrial process. The goal is to prevent pollution, but the ultimate goal is to do it in a way that saves you money, time and material," he said.
"So you're not just looking at compliance, though you should be in compliance with the regulations. But you look at it in such a way that you're trying to maintain quality of product and at the same time, use less material or produce less waste. The goal is to come out ahead, and feel positive that you've looked at your process and you've eliminated the wasteful elements."
This could include changing an entire process, or changing something as simple as the way you use, store or recycle chemicals, he said.
"It might even involve changing the chemicals you use. Quite often, there are substitutes for a product you've used for five or 10 years that work just as well. They may cost more, but produce less waste, and in the end, you're actually saving money."
The challenge, he added, is in getting owners to examine their processes and be willing to make the changes.
"If you're in business and you're making money and you're not in trouble with any regulations or environmental issues, then why should you change anything?" he said.
"But if you don't change for the better, you're going to get caught off guard when the economy goes down, or your competitors get a new production line in, or I'd hate to say it, but the Canadian dollar goes up in value.
"The Canadian economy is based a lot on the low value of the dollar, but when the dollar value goes up, you can't sell your goods. So if your profit margins aren't as high as they could be and you're not analyzing that on a regular basis, you're going to be less competitive."
Clunas said oftentimes he'll find areas a company can change that the owners missed.
"I find it's advantageous for me not to be an expert on their process because then I ask the obvious questions," he said. "I'll ask, why do you do this, and can you do something different? And if the answer's an immediate no, they're not thinking about it.
"But if they stop and think, they'll think, 'Well, we've done it for a long time, we know it works, but maybe we could think about modifying it since it is causing this much waste.'"
He said it's important that he approach industries with a positive, rather than critical, attitude.
"I'm not going to complain about an industry being sloppy unless I can give them a reason they shouldn't be. So if I see something and I can't come up with a way to fix it, I probably shouldn't say anything," he said.
"It's just like if I look at your life and say, 'Okay you're pretty good at buying groceries, but look at all the stuff you didn't eat and you just threw away.' And I ask 'Well, why did you buy that?' and you tell me it's because, well, somebody wanted you to. That's not a good reason, and you just wasted your money.
"And when you start paying for garbage bags, you're going to feel the pinch because now you're paying for the garbage, plus the product you bought, plus it sits in your house or your factory for a week or two, causing storage issues."
He added that since the cost of disposing of industrial waste is calculated by weight, "the less waste you produce, the less you pay."
P2 Planning affects every aspect of a company, not just the amount of waste produced. It includes the raw materials, the garbage, the water used, the waste water produced and the energy used in the process.
"Pollution prevention, by definition, applies to everything that comes into and leaves a site," Clunas said. "You can do it totally holistically, and say, 'Well we could produce less waste but use twice as much electrical power,' but that is kind of defeating the goal. You want to find a better option that produces less waste, uses an equivalent amount of power or less and has some sort of recycling component to it."
When it comes to industries initiating P2 Planning, Clunas said every company needs its own motivation, whether it be that they really care about keeping the environment clean and reducing waste and pollution, that they know of other companies that got in trouble for not complying with certain environmental regulations, or that it becomes law to have a P2 Plan.
"There are some that grab onto it right away because they can see that it will save them money and they want to take action ahead of time to avoid issues. Then there are others who will probably never do it," he said. "I've been to sites that were just P2 saturated, and I've been to others that were just filthy. I'm doing one now in Toronto that's like that and they don't see why they should change.
"They've got this wetland beside their plant site and it's basically a wildlife area, but there's oil on top of the water. If any of their neighbours ever complain, they'd have to clean it up. But cleaning it up wouldn't solve the issue because they're continually adding oil through their daily actions. So my concept is, you do pollution prevention to clean the inside of the plant, and eventually you should be able to clean up the outside and it should stay clean."
In July 2000, the City of Toronto became the first municipality in Ontario to create a bylaw forcing industries to do P2 Planning. Industries there are required to submit a plan, report progress every two years and generate a new plan every six years. As a result, Clunas said, some industries are discovering the benefits the planning can bring to the company, while others do the minimum amount of work required to meet the bylaw's requirements.
"I don't believe pollution prevention should be mandatory. Successful planning requires commitment from all levels of an organization. If you make it mandatory, people will just appear to have done it," he said. "For instance, I'm dealing with another site that appears to have done it, but hasn't. And upon challenging that site, they haven't done a thing because they have complied with the law. That isn't good enough. It has to come from the heart, it has to be done for a good reason, and in the case of industry, it's the profit line. You do it because you want to or there's a good reason to do it."
A good time to come up with a P2 Plan, he added, is when an industry replaces its production equipment. Finding a machine that produces the same quality and amount of product but less waste will save money in waste disposal.
It's also best to come up with a plan when there are no outstanding environmental issues to deal with, he said.
"What I've found as a consultant is that if you come in and you start with the pollution prevention philosophy, it's a little more positive than dealing with an issue. If you have an issue with a regulator, you're just going to deal with that one issue. But it's not going to stop behaviour and actions that aren 't beneficial anymore," he said. "So it's just a more positive approach to go in and look at the whole process and pick and choose where you want to start. I think a lot more industries would do P2 Planning if they knew how much it would benefit them."
Other services Clunas Environmental Consulting offers include compliance with sewer use bylaws, sampling of drinking water, storm water, ground water and sewage, management plans for spills and other discharges from a facility, site assessment for storm water management and quality, and updating of Ministry of the Environment (MOE) certificates of approval.
To contact David Clunas, call (416) 414-7656 or e-mail him at david.clunas@rogers.com.
P2 Planning affects every aspect of a company, not just the amount of waste produced. It includes the raw materials, the garbage, the water used, the waste water produced and the energy used in the process.
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