PLANWOOD.COM

Multifaceted approaches to the complex challenge of sustainability earn commercial furniture manufacturers the highest marks for the lowest environmental impact.

"A manufacturer's obligation for its products doesn't begin and end at the loading docks," says Scott Lesnet, environmental and safety manager at Allsteel in Muscatine, Iowa. This simple statement is packed with meaning. He emphasizes that a manufacturer must look at everything from where its vended materials and components come from

 (including resources, content, and the embodied energy expended to manufacturer them) to how they will behave in the customer's environment (including off-gassing, ease of maintenance, and ease of disassembly for potential reuse or recycling) before it can even begin to claim to be an environmentally responsible corporate citizen.

Scott Deugo, corporate vice president of sustainable development for Teknion in Toronto, agrees that environmental responsibility means a lot more than claiming to offer green products. "I hear people talk about sustainability and I wonder if they've ever read the dictionary," he muses. In the end, the truth is that a literally sustainable company does not yet exist. "We try as a company to reduce our environmental footprint," Deugo says. "How do we do that?" According to Deugo, Teknion has aligned itself with LEED, "which helps guide behaviors with a standard that contains good strategies to achieve 'green' goals." The company's factories are ISO14000 certified to minimize the environmental impact of the manufacturing process. And its product development seeks to minimize the environmental impact of a product at the design phase. "You do all of those things, and you have a nice synergy going," he says.

"Some companies say they have special green products, and I don't know if that's the best solution," Lesnet says. "That's not what we choose to do." Allsteel's approach has more to do with a corporate philosophy—understood by everyone from design to procurement to production to marketing to customer service and, of course, management—that introduces green values through life cycle analysis at every level of a manufacturer's operations. A truly environmentally responsible company should "look at its normal sequence of change and incrementally green the process," he advises. The result is that instead of "special green products," there is some green built into everything the company does. "A little bit of green in all of a company's products probably has a higher, faster impact than building custom green products," he concludes.

"Green is not a driver," adds Lesnet, and in terms of product design, it holds equal weight with other important qualities like aesthetics, function, efficiency, safety, and profitability. In fact, Deugo and Lesnet also agree that decreasing one's environmental impact is only one of a series of goals that should be assumed by responsible corporations. Another is social responsibility. "Sustainability is a noble goal," says Deugo. "Certainly there is a sense of trying to do the right thing, but companies must also focus on the end result." Ultimately, the most important corporate goal is profitability.

Communicating a company's environmental position can be a difficult task, especially in a competitive landscape rife with greenwashing. Above all, emphasizes Deugo, tell the truth. "Don't overrepresent or overpromise." He prefers to take the low road. "In our corporate culture, we take a humble approach to the issue," he explains. "If people ask us about it, we'll tell them the 'something' we're doing and how we're doing it. I travel across the U.S. and most parts of Canada, and pretty much across the board people are trying to understand the concept of sustainability, wondering what role they can play, and how they can achieve a return on investment." Even so, Lesnet is frustrated by an apparent widespread lack of understanding of the true issue. "It's sad that clients don't want to take the time to understand the impact of the decisions they make," he says. "The want a quick answer to a complex problem. There is no such thing."

In the meantime, commercial furniture manufacturers are moving in the right direction, and continue to be pushed that way whether they like it or not by consumer regulation. Government regulations relating to air pollution have been in place for years and compliance is now routine. Energy efficiency and waste reduction in the manufacturing process have been driven by the ongoing need for cost reduction. BIFMA has long advocated the reduction of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and harmful chemical agents both inside the manufacturing facility and in the end-user environment, resulting in such commonplace alternatives as water-based adhesives and powdercoat finishes. "But the biggest single recent change has been in the suppliers to the industry," notes Lesnet. Consumers are asking for products fabricated with materials that minimize environmental impact, and manufacturers, in turn, are putting the challenge to their suppliers. And according to Lesnet, evolutionary change in the area of sustainability is quickening. "Revisit this article in one year," he says, "And you will find monumental change."