Waste Working Party

摘要

This article is about good business management: how to improve your bottom line by eliminating waste from your operations. It is not about saving the planet. Certainly, I would like my children to inherit a world rich in biodiversity, but that will be the side-effect of successfully managing business in the changing world in which we live. If we do not adapt our businesses to these changes they will become extinct: think Kodak, which failed to embrace the business reality of digital photography and so went bankrupt. The UK currently injects 600 million tonnes of raw materials into its economy every year; with informed estimates suggesting that over 90 per cent of this has been thrown away within six months.1 This massive loss of value presents a huge opportunity for companies to become more efficient, more profitable and more resilient in the face of change.