Good thoughts. I guess I could have been clearer in my discussion of the role of government in “new” vs. “old” environmentalism.

An old environmentalist is what is known as a “command-and-control” environmentalist. There’s a place for this, but it is limited. Instead of encouraging people to pollute less, it encourages them to pollute as much as they are allowed to–and no less, since reducing pollution under the allotted amount costs money but provides no financial benefit.

A new environmentalist would generally prefer to have the government step in by reforming subsidies and taxes. For example, instead of subsidizing coal and nuclear power, which we did for years to provide cheap energy for a booming economy, we would tax those forms of energy and turn our subsidies instead to energy efficiency and renewable energy research. Since tax avoidance is a rational behavior (economically speaking), businesses in energy intensive fields would presumably turn to less expensive sources of energy and energy efficiency.

These are oversimplified examples, but the end goal is to align the interests of business, government, and the environment so that we’re all working together. And I think that’s probably a pretty lean thing to do, too.

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So lean afficionados, what do you think? Should a company that knows its products are facing a significant decline in demand keep making that product line, perhaps improving profitability by implementing lean? Or is the company better served by seeking an alternative that will allow the facility to produce a product with a potentially rising demand (also using lean to improve profits)?

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Thanks for the positive comments, anon.

David, I’m not sure what the economic tradeoffs are. Carbon fiber is probably more expensive to produce. Aluminum is very recyclable, which is good because there is a tremendous amount of embodied energy in aluminum. But perhaps I should have elaborated more on the cradle-to-cradle aspect. The idea is to design using materials that are both lightweight and easily reUSED, not reCYCLED. Recycling what you do when you have failed to either reduce or reuse the original material. It should be the option of last resort. And there are certainly many technical hurdles to overcome in designing a more efficient car, but the hurdles remain because not enough attention has been paid to them. They’re not insurmountable, they just need some significant work, work that the auto industry has been unwilling to do.

One problem with making cars lighter, much like the problem of making buildings greener, is that the steps to be taken in design COST the manufacturer but BENEFIT the consumer, so it can be difficult to reconcile the extra expense needed to make cars lighter with the profit to the manufacturer. But with higher prices on gas, people will pay a premium for better mileage, as we’ve seen recently. The big 3 US carmakers are up the creek with gas-guzzling SUVs and scrambling to catch up, once again, to Toyota because they were too short-sighted to work on efficiency a decade ago when gas was cheap.

But improving efficiency doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. There are many, many things engineers could do to improve the mileage of cars immediately that would be very cost effective. The Union of Concerned Scientists redesigned the Ford Explorer years ago to get about 50% better fuel economy without significantly increasing the cost to manufacture it.

But anon is right, $4 gas will help. I paid $3.39 the other day for regular (unfortunately, there’s no decent public transit between Boston and Burlington, VT, and no way to get around the suburbs of Burlington once you’re there without a car). Many economists think that the true cost of a gallon of gas should be higher than it is now to account for the negative externalities–environmental damage, road infrastructure, time lost in traffic, deaths from driving, etc.–that come from driving. Even ultraconservatives like Harvard’s Gregory Mankiw are calling for a $1 a gallon tax increase to curb gas use.

Andy, steel may be easily recyclable, but that’s beside the point. Steel is far heavier than modern materials, so the fuel economy of the car suffers dramatically. And when you build a heavier car, you need a bigger engine, more robust tires, etc. And recycling should always be the option of last resort. Recycling is a failure to reduce or reuse. Add in the fact that demand from India and China has pushed the prices for all metals through the roof, and it’s another strike against steel.

Mike, thanks for your comments. Glad you liked the post.

J. Thatcher, just because the book was written 10 years ago, that doesn’t make the ideas old. I’m still dealing with lots of people who haven’t changed their thinking since the 1960′s. I’m not sure when Deming started writing, but I know it was a lot longer than 10 years ago, and his ideas are still considered revolutionary by people who are new to them. It’s only in the last couple of years that Toyota has taken lean out of the fringe and into the mainstream (i.e., where people like me who don’t work in manufacturing will hear about it).

It’s been a couple of years since I read the book, so I’m not sure what you’re referencing about the scavenger set economy, but what I really took away from the book was the notion that we could redesign government to financially reward good environmental choices and punish bad ones. As a free market libertarian type, these ideas appeal to me. I was also very impressed by the concept of tunneling towards efficiency. And sure, not everything that Lovins and Hawken wrote was perfect, but it’s given us a place to start and reshaped the environmental movement.

And yes, the ability to own a car has defined success for many of us for decades. I think that Lovins et al. were simply working in that paradigm when they made their comments. They did also call for a much stronger public transit system, since they realized that not every person on the planet could own a car. Hopefully we’ll soon move past the point where owning a car = success, and get to a point where owning a car is seen as a burden or a tool necessary for certain limited professions.

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The issue I take with natural capital as a set of theory is its belief in the extension of the service sector.

Perhaps I’m remembering this incorrectly and it was just a hermeneutical move to extend the paradigm, but I remember it more as an actual belief in the expansion and worth of the service sector and eventually an utterly reliance on a scavenger set economy.

It is amusing that at some point success became defined as the ability to own your very own internal combustion engine.

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Besides, Lean and Green are really one in the same. As you mentioned, a big part of Lean is reducing waste (another way of putting it is “conserving resources”); ditto for Green. Lean is also about doing what’s right for company, the economy, and society as a whole; ditto for Green. To me, it’s just long-term thinking and respect for people applied to whatever we’re doing.

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I’m also wondering about the relative fabrication costs for the materials, and how the economy of scale curve looks for each.

Anyone have any thoughts?

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I found the EPA’s Lean and Environment workbook to be very innovative. My first thought was “wow…the government wrote this?”!

Even after facilitating 10 or 20 VSM projects, I never thought of considering solid waste along with the other 8 wastes. I see now that there is an Energy version along the same lines. Brilliant! It would be so simple to incorporate these additional data into a value stream map, and even more savings could be generated.

Plus, as you mentioned was Subaru’s experience, this is another way to invoke passion in people. I think if you include a green focus in the lean process, you will engage more minds and hands in the process.

I encourage everyone on the blog to look at these 2 workbooks, and use them. We all like to make our world a little greener, and this is an easy and powerful way to integrate this focus into work you are already doing.

Interesting thoughts about cars. You raise some great points….we have a long long way to go. Maybe $4 gas will help…we’ll see, it seems to be coming!

Great video too. I’d be interested in an analysis of Mayor Bloomberg’s recent green NYC plan and how it compares with the Colombian experience.

Keep up the good work!

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