Wild Profits:
How Multinationals are Restoring Habitat and Saving Money
by John Wasik
For nearly two centuries, natural habitats adjoining industrial
facilities were more noted for smoke and effluent than flora and fauna. In
an emerging pardigm that marries biophilia (love of life) with the bottom
line, however, some enlightened corporations are beginning to change that
reality.
Companies are finding that it's beneficial to employees and
operations budgets to restore corporate lands into viable wildlife habitats.
From the Pacific Rim to Eastern Europe, companies are discovering that
restored habitats not only reduce regulatory compliance burdens, but improve
employee morale, and trim long-term maintenance costs.
For example, RENA, a German-based company, found that it "saved or
made several hundred thousand dollars last year by refilling several gravel
pits and quarries with non-polluted excavation material," according to
Reinhard Schneider. The project has proved so successful - along with ground
leveling and tree replantings - that RENA plans to "recultivate" other
facilities.
At Ford's 5,000 worker Cuadidlan complex in Mexico City, the company
"adopted" 2,000 trees from a government agency and planted them throughout
the 262-acre grounds. Workers volunteered to plant the trees on weekends (and
received 8,000 trees for home planting). After developing a priority list of
areas to be enhanced, Ford hired a biologist to develop an inventory of
spaces and animals. About 300,000 square meters were then converted into
natural areas. Luis Laura, manager of environmental quality, said the
positive results of the project have encouraged the company to expand the
program to ten other Mexican facilities.
The global trend toward corporate habitat restoration extends beyond
landscaping. Operations costs are reduced because natural habitats are often
less expensive to maintain. Prairies don't need to be mowed or watered;
wetlands serve as natural drainage and wastewater treatment systems. Ravaged
habitats also tend to increase a company's environmental compliance
liability. Rick Richins of Coeur d'Alene Mines, a multinational mining
company, remarks that his company's restoration efforts at its 400-acre
Golden Cross, New Zealand site and other facilities will "reduce long-term
liability by millions of dollars. Mining companies like Coeur d'Alene are
under increasingly stringent state and federal environmental regulations
because they use highly toxic cyanide in "leaching" metal ores from unwanted
materials.
As part of a comprehensive company-wide reclamation program, Coeur
d'Alene employs "concurrent reclamation of operating mines while
incorporating a native restoration program with plants and stream
rehabilitation," Richins said. The company plans to expand the program to a
mine in Chile and other sites.
Another potent but hard-to-define benefit is that a more natural
environment can enhance employee productivity. The phenomenon known as
biophilia is increasingly being applied to corporate habitat philosophy.
According to Professor Roger Ulrich of Texas A&M University, "a growing
number of studies have found that unthreatening natural environments are
effective in eliciting broadly positive shifts in emotional states among
unstressed as well as stressed individuals." This means that natural
surroundings such as prairies, meadows, mountains and wetlands can be
comforting to employees.
Corporate managers are restoring habitats and reaping economic
benefits on their properties in a number of innovative ways. At DuPont's
Asturias, Spain, facility, for example, a natural wetland drainage system
was installed instead of a conventional pipe system. The company claims that
some $1 million was saved per month based on the costs involved in
permitting and installing a conventional system.
The DuPont - and other aforementioned projects - were later
independently certified by a Silver Spring, MD.-based group called the
Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC). Borne out of a discussion of leading
environmental groups and the U.S.-based Business Roundtable, the WHC forges
unique partnerships with multinationals to restore and improve habitat on
their properties. The group provides technical support, a rigorous
certification process and ongoing consultation.
According to Joyce Kelly, former president of WHC, "you can do
what's right for the environment and it doesn't cost very much." Kelly has
flown all over the world to inspect sites and consult with corporate
managers on subjects as varied as attracting endangered species to employee
productivity. The WHC's certification program provides a third-party
independent auditing of a company's wildlife management, native plants,
endangered species and hands-on programs that employees can run on a
continuing basis.
Unlike previous public relations efforts to promote unverified
environmental benefits (greenwashing), WHC's program emphasizes the entire
organization's commitment to education and improvement. "We tell companies
from the beginning if they're in it for greenwashing, they'll lose," Kelly
noted. Moreover, Kelly said that employees won't become involved if the
company mounts a superficial effort, adding, "they know the difference
between action and rhetoric."
Rocky Mountain Institute consultant Bill Browning is serving as pro-bono
environmental advisor to the Smithsonian Instituation's National Museum of
the American Indian in Washington D.C.
Slated for completion in 2002, it will occupy the last available site on the
Mall, between the National Air & Space Museum and the Capitol. Input from
native peoples has given the museum's designers a clear mandate to make it a
green building.
Perhaps the greatest expression of the museum's environmental responsiveness
is its landscaping, which will restore much of the site to the wetlands,
forest, and native meadows that covered the area before the arrival of
Europeans.
from Rocky Mountain Institute Newsletter
John Wasik: author of Green Marketing & Management: A Global Perspective
(Blackwell, 800-216-2522), a comprehensive guide to "greening" any organization.
"Sustainability in Urban Ecosystems", is a new publication by U.Minnesota
entomologists Vera Krischik and Kathyn Bevacqua. They emphasize working with
nature to resote the ecosystem balance through soil and site improvements.
800-876-8636
Visit the NWF website for a good description of corporate land conservation.
from John Wasik