MCF'S IMPROVED ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE
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Company: MCF d.o.o. Consultancy, Broking and Trade
Sector: Commerce
Location: Lucija, Slovenia
Let us meet Marie Fabič, CEO of the Slovene company MCF, and learn about her experiences with improving the company's environmental performance.
Marie Fabič. what is your best advice to companies and managers who wish to incorporate environmentally sound practices in their business?
My best advice is that the planning stage is critical to the success of your environmental management plan!
There is a saying; »If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!«, so the following is what to do:
- Define your company's Environmental Policy
- Define your company's Environmental Responsibility with description of your commitment to continous improvement, pollution prevention, and your compliance with relevant regulations
- Plan and Implement Environmental Actions
- Incorporate Environmental Management into all levels of company operations and decision-making processes. Working together as a team is likely to produce the best results, so you will need to:
- Educate, train and engage your staff in environmental issues, because together you will need to find out how to manage the productive use of resources without reducing their productivity and quality
- Check and Correct Actions
- Review Management
Whether you intend to obtain ISO 14001 certification or not, contact your nation's standardization office, ask for information, and order national regulations and publications of environment management.
Implement an EMS (Environment Managements Systems) and incorporate it into all levels of your company operations and decision-making process. You will soon experience that the awareness of environmental protection will arise among your employees.
Let me as an example use a business in the commercial sector for incorporating environmentally sound practices:
- Practice the best environmental solutions for waste management; recycle, reuse, renew
- Use renewable materials
- Find solutions to reduce the use of energy
- Reduce the use of consumables
- Reduce your carbon footprints
- Save your documents digitally
- Reduce the amount of business travels
- Environmental management is a continous process, so actions for further improvement will definitely follow!
- Audit the environmental management system and conduct an environmental management review
What was your first big step for reducing inefficient resources?
It was definitely the reduction of our carbon-footprints! I planned to create a paper-free office when we established the new office, and today we benefit:
- Digital files in logical order, makes it much easier to search for the required documents rather than going through carbon-printed paper files
- As paper attracts dust and it polluts the office air – by using digital files we have reduced the dust and gained a much cleaner and healthier office environment
- Regarding a document we no longer need, we do not have to recycle its paper, we simply press the delete button!
- There is no use for me to sit down and calculate our savings per carbon-footprint, because I know that we have saved approximately 5% of our total office costs by reducing copy paper and carbon prints
Your next step in reducing your impact on the environment was...?
Water, electricity, and waste; Moving from a country with huge natural resources, clean water and cheap electricity - to another country with less natural resources, different drinking water quality, in addition to much higher prices on water and electricity, made me wake up immediately, I had to change my attitudes.
Today we do not take water for granted;
- We have reduced the water consumption in office, and at home
- We practice water economy in the household when doing laundry, dish washing and cleaning
- We prefer bio-products for cleaning
- Filters are installed in all tubs for purifying drinking water by removing clore and sandstone
Electricity consumption is reduced by:
- Examination of the current lightening systems
- Upgrading of equipment
- Recovering heatening from equipment
- Using compact flourscent bulbs
- Checking/changing bulbs when they have rached 75% of their estimated lives
- Using wall-mounted sensors in store rooms and for out-door lightening
- Using natural daylight when it is possible
- Turning off eqiupment and lightening when not in use
Waste is reduced by:
- Reducing the use of consumables; paper, utilities etc
- Using renewable materials
- Using recycled paper for packaging
- Practicing best environmental solutions for recycling of paper, newpapers, magazines, glass, metal, plastics, and household/biological waste
Have you reduced your business travels?
Yes, you can call it reduced - because I have a car, but I do not use it much. I prefer walking rather than driving. When I travel on duty it is always by train, bus or subway. It is more comfortable and allows me to work during the tour. Regarding traveling by air, I have reduced the amount of overseas travels by arranging phone conferances instead.
Any working practice with environment protection?
Yes, 10 years ago in a Norwegian-Chinese Environment Protection Program, for Chinese senior managers of private and state owned companies, in Beijing, Shanghai and Kunming. The seminars we arranged were fully booked. Interesting experience.
What will you say are China's biggest environmental challenges today?
Unfortunately has some of China's environmental goals failed due to the country's rapid and uncontrolled economic development. The Western world is also responsible for this failure, since many Western companies have moved their production to China. Air, water and land pollution, environmental accidents, solid waste, water-shortage, inefficent energy and release of greenhouse gases are the greatest challenges China faces today. Environmental accidents are many, in average one every second day, and it has become a distinct area for them to watch, control and reduce.
What is your next environmental goal?
Besides maintaining the information pages on Environmental Practices and The Green Corner in Dragonicum.com, I will also act locally outside the office, and even encourage friends and neighbours to use best practice in recycling of their household waste.
Tell us, where will you place your company on a scale from: Low - Medium - High - environmental impact?
For the improvements I have achieved in MCF's office, I can today place it on low environmental impact, and I hope as a result of my efforts in Dragonicum.com's engagement in Environmental Practices on Internet to be able to place other companies on low environmental impact by the end of 2009.