Wednesday, December 7, 2011

No Left Turns, and Other Heresies

I recently had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with Andrew Winston, co-author of Green to Gold, and a new book, Green Recovery.  He spoke at the NAEM Annual Forum in Tucson.

Andrew is a guy who really does seem to walk the talk.  He requested a vegetarian meal at dinner, and was familiar off the top of his head with which fish were harvested the most sustainably.  Much of his talk was on how to sell senior executives on the bottom line value of waste reduction, which parallels resource conservation. 

But, one part that struck me was Andrew's interest in innovation around sustainable resource management, and in particular the concept of a heretical idea.  An idea that is totally crazy, different, and has the opportunity to really make a major change in your company.  A couple examples that were cited were (of course) the Toyota Prius, and UPS' "no left turn" concept.  I can't imagine how fast the guy who suggested this got laughed out of the room!   But, UPS claims that the policy cut "28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons".   Not bad.

What's your heresy?

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