bigpicture
Peter Bradley
Editorial Director
peter@dcvelocity.com
Karen Bachrach
Executive Editor
karen@dcvelocity.com
Toby Gooley
Managing Editor
tgooley@dcvelocity.com
David Maloney
Senior Editor, Special Projects & eContent
dmaloney@dcvelocity.com
Mark Solomon
Senior Editor
mark@dcvelocity.com
Susan Lacefield
Associate Managing Editor
slacefield@dcvelocity.com
James Cooke
Editor at Large
jcooke@dcvelocity.com
Steve Geary
Editor at Large
sgeary@dcvelocity.com
George Weimer
Editor at Large
gweimer@dcvelocity.com
Erica E. Mac Donald
Assistant Editor
Sean Maloney
Assistant Editor
Keisha Capitola
Director of Creative Services
keisha@dcvelocity.com
Jeff Thacker
Director of eMedia
jeff@dcvelocity.com
Columnists:
Clifford F. Lynch
Don Jacobson
Shelly Safian
Kenneth B. Ackerman
Art Van Bodegraven
Barry Brandman
Sustaining sustainability
Gary Master
Publisher
gmaster@dcvelocity.com
Mitch Mac Donald
Group Editorial Director
mitch@dcvelocity.com
Jim Indelicato
Group Publisher
jindelicato@dcvelocity.com
EDITORIAL OFFICE
Tower Square, Number 4
500 East Washington Street
North Attleboro, MA 02760
Subscribe at
www.dcvelocity.com
or call (630) 739-0900
THE VAST MAJORITY OF CLIMATE SCIENTISTS NOW AGREE THAT
the earth is getting warmer and that the carbon humans pump into the
atmosphere contributes substantially to that worrisome trend.
Where the debate now turns is to what the industrialized and developing worlds can or should do about it. While policy makers continue to
debate that, many businesses have taken the initiative to begin reducing
their carbon footprint and to otherwise develop sustainable business practices. The word “sustainability” has replaced “green” in much of the discussion around the topic because many of the things businesses are doing
go well beyond measuring and reducing their carbon footprints.
In broad terms, sustainable business practices are those that can be
employed for a long time without depleting resources
or harming the environment. They include practices
that foster employee growth and community wellbeing. And, as any sustainable business practice must do,
they are things that over time contribute to financial
health.
A lot of the effort around sustainability is occurring
in the supply chain. That’s no surprise. Resource
extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and so on
are major sources of energy use and carbon emissions,
and steps businesses take to reduce those have to be a
good thing. We’ve seen some of the largest companies
in the world—Walmart and UPS, for instance—
embrace sustainability across their operations. One
example: Walmart retrofitted the lighting in more than
100 of its DCs and may do so all over again if its current tests of LEDs
(light-emitting diodes) prove out. (Jeff Smith, senior director of logistics
maintenance and purchasing for Walmart, described that and other investments at Dematic’s Material Handling & Logistics Conference in Park City,
Utah, in September.)
Now skeptics might argue that businesses transporting goods around
the world, or providing much of that transportation, don’t really do much
by marginally shrinking their enormous footprints. Others might contend
that the efforts amount to mere window dressing.
But I think it has become clear that unless efforts make economic as well
as environmental or social sense, they are doomed to fail. Major reductions
in greenhouse gases require technological innovation that will come only
through investment, and that, of course, requires capital that only healthy
and thriving businesses can provide. Walmart’s lighting retrofit program,
for instance, cost an average of $370,000 per DC. The company will get a
return on that investment, for certain. But the investment had to come first.
A PUBLICATION OF
Editorial Director
