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K mailer on : Manufacturing Published : 15.11.2010 ISSN 0972-3900
Picture this…a small brewery. The water used in the brewing process, flows from the plant into ponds that
are designed for fish cultivation. Spent grain from the fermentation process is partly used for mushroom
and partly for earthworm cultivation. The earthworms are in turn used as chicken feed. Sounds more like a
science or an environmental theme experiment, isn’t it? Incredible but true…that’s what is actually
happening in a small but unconventional brewery in Namibia, Southern Africa.
A change of thought!!
Productivity is the key to success across all industries. The three basic economic input factors are capital,
labour and raw materials. However, for decades, industries have given emphasis mainly on labour and
capital.
The focus, in terms of labour, was on how to produce more with less people. For long, developing
countries believed that low labour costs would give them a competitive advantage in the market. However,
with technological improvements and manufacturing innovations, low labour costs, have in many cases,
been replaced by almost nil labour costs. Many industries are slowly replacing labour in areas where
machines can do work very effectively with the help of advanced software. A simple instance is that of
carpet making in the textile sector. The largest exporters of carpets in the world today are Europeans and
Americans, not Persians and Pakistanis, who were once the leaders in that sector. Although the latter
competed competitively for many years due to low labour costs, technological advancements and
innovations helped the former gain a market monopoly.
Likewise, in terms of capital, the focus was on more returns with less risk. Industries have cleverly
handled this aspect over the years.
Thus, for almost over 30 years, industries have been focusing only on these two economic input factors.
The third, namely, raw material productivity, was seldom a priority. The reason is simple enough. In those
times, raw materials were available abundantly and moreover, the average prices were low.
The last decade however has witnessed major changes in the market. The steep rise in raw material prices
has given industries the green signal to awake and ponder over raw material productivity.
This was precisely what Gunter Pauli was evaluating all along.
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Manufacturing > K Mailer: Best Practices In Manufacturing, 15.11.2010 Page 2 of 2
Meet the social entrepreneur!
Gunter Pauli has an incredible list of credentials. The former CEO of Ecover, a Belgian firm, is not just a
business leader, but also an innovative social entrepreneur. A student of INSEAD, the prestigious European
business school, Pauli spent several years globetrotting as a consultant and lecturer for IBM. The author of
eight management books, Pauli then took over as CEO of Ecover, a small Belgian company that
manufactures cleaning products like laundry powder, dishwashing liquid, car wax etc. In the early nineties,
Pauli led Ecover to establish a near zero-emissions factory in Belgium. This ‘green factory’, though small,
created a media sensation in Europe. It used natural derivatives for its products. The water treatment
system ran entirely on solar and wind energy. Moreover, the plant had a grass roof that kept it cool in
summer and warm in winter. The walls had bricks made of recycled clay.
Take the case of beer. The brewing process wastes massive quantities of water, in addition to consuming
huge supplies of grain. Producing one unit of beer consumes almost ten units of water. Likewise, the
fermentation process in brewing extracts a mere 8% of nutrients. Among the nutrients left behind, 26%
was pure proteins. Such a colossal wastage of resources is criminal…environmentally, economically and
morally!
Think about sugar. Since sugar cane is a seasonal crop, sugar mills operate say for a quarter of a year. So
why let expensive machinery lie idle for the rest of the seasons? Why not consider the option of using the
machinery to make other products? Pauli also observed that most of the sugar mills used the chief by-
product of sugar processing, namely bagasse, merely as fuel. He stressed the need to look at bagasse as a
resource, not a waste. What he looked for was to use the fibres present in bagasse as substitutes for
cellulose, for instance, in paper pulp. Countries like Brazil and Columbia, which produce tons of sugar,
incinerate the waste, thus wasting tons of cellulose. On the other hand, they destroyed precious rain
forests to obtain cellulose for their paper industry…This, Gunter Pauli termed as, ‘a huge missed business
opportunities’. Why not link these industries to minimise such losses?
How Gunter Pauli converted such missed business opportunities using the framework of ‘zero emissions’ to
get cracking at raw material productivity will be discussed in the forthcoming article.
Priya Sudhir
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