ELIMINATE WASTE
We, as humans, are quickly depleting the Earth's natural resources and need to drastically cut back if we expect industry to continue in the twenty-first century. We do tremendous damage every day to our local environment by sending huge amounts of waste to the landfill, in turn, damaging air, land and water.
Issue: Industrial processes generate enormous amounts of waste which cannot be assimilated by nature or reused by industry. The volume of waste reflects inefficiencies which degrade the environment, harm the economy and reduce customer value.
Response: Our goal is to eliminate waste. To accomplish this, we are reexamining our current sources of waste and creating programs to first reduce and then to eliminate them. We are redesigning products and processes to reduce and simplify the amount of resources used, so that material "waste" will no longer be "waste" and may be remanufactured into new resources, providing technical "nutrients" for the next cycle of production.
Material/Energy Waste Elimination:
Interface is using emerging technologies to identify and eliminate material/energy waste.We define waste as any cost that does not produce value to our customers. This means scrap, in the traditional meaning of waste, but it also includes "processes." Waste includes what we don't do right the first time -- a misdirected shipment, an incorrect invoice, a defective product.QUEST
To address the challenge of eliminating waste, we have engaged all of our associates in a common purpose called QUEST (Quality Utilizing Employee Suggestions and Teamwork). |
QUEST is our initiative designed to eliminate measurable waste by establishing focused and innovative teams throughout the world, to identify, measure, then eliminate waste streams. The progress of these teams is communicated to all participants monthly, as a way to stimulate competition and spur ideas. Numerous teams have also been formed to reduce the volumes of materials purchased through process efficiency improvements.
Eliminating waste doesn't have to be costly. InterfaceFABRIC's Guilford of Maine Facility estimates that they will save two million gallons of water each year after installing an $8.50 USD brass nozzle. Read more.
Staff members at InterfaceFABRIC's Dyehouse in Guilford, Maine constantly evaluate their chemical processes in the interest of eliminating waste. Read more.
"We pass this way only once, we can leave the Earth better off or worse by our individual and collective actions. It's that simple. We can help or we can hurt the Earth and future generations. Which will it be?"
Ray C. Anderson
Chairman, Interface, Inc.