Last week, the Doctor gave some good information on green purchasing. I do not want to be repetitive, but I ran across an article by Kimberly Knickle of Manufacturing Insights that had some great tips that expand upon this topic.

Here is a summary of the suggested guidelines that resulted from her research:

• Your company may need to rethink its business model: Energy companies clearly face this, with their shift away from a model where revenue increases with demand. For manufacturers, this means new products, new combinations of products and services or even new customers or new partners.

• Make it easy for your customers to go green: Create greener product alternatives, and take the complexity out of going green with new services and product combinations.

• Don’t change your ROI requirements for green operations, products and services: But recognize that regional cost differences may make projects more appealing in some manufacturing sites over others. Then use more successful projects to fund those that have lower (or more long-term) financial benefits.

• Reduce and reuse are the first steps, and then comes recycling: Apply this across a broad spectrum — raw materials, packaging, energy, water and more.

• Make public commitments, including your targets, and report on your progress: This not only benefits your reputation but also makes sure everyone is living up to the same standards. And don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s not just about carbon or carbon dioxide.

• Ask for participation from employees and suppliers: The important component in that statement is the need for voluntary participation, with manufacturers commenting that once employees and partners know the goals, the task becomes much easier. One caution: With suppliers, it often requires a 1:1 connection.

• Take advantage of government programs and knowledge in your peer group: That includes many of the examples we discussed earlier, such as the EPA and DOE.

• Data matters: We can’t emphasize enough that this is about a shift from the qualitative to quantitative in goals, performance metrics, identifying improvement opportunities and more. One key point: Efficiency improvements will put a company in a good place for any carbon or environmental regulation, as long as you have the data to demonstrate those efficiencies.