Lean and green

Workshop will teach businesses to save money while saving the planet

An upcoming workshop in Port Hawkesbury will focus on how businesses can make efforts to be green while also staying lean.

The workshop, which is called Green Sustainability for Profit: Uniting Lean with Green, is presented by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, the Green Enterprise Movement and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. It will take place Nov. 15 at the Nova Scotia Community College’s Strait area campus.

This one-day, interactive workshop aims to reveal the hidden and costly wastes often overlooked in organizations. It provides a simple process for eliminating waste to protect margins while increasing profitability and competitiveness. Focusing on the reduction and avoidance of costs through environmental performance, the workshop will attempt to provide a clear process along with tools to realize both short-term and long-term benefits that yield immediate savings while putting in place common sense structures to secure future savings.

The step-by-step process describes how to identify, measure and move toward the elimination of seven key environmental wastes — energy, water, materials, garbage, transportation, emissions and biodiversity — that consume significant resources in most companies and must now be addressed.

This workshop session will show participants that integrating lean principles with green activities can provide substantial savings as a result of improved environmental performance.

The hands-on workshop is designed specifically for organizations in Atlantic Canada. Participants will learn how to identify and engage internal resources to identify reduction opportunities in greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, other emissions, process and domestic waste streams and improve bio-diversity. This workshop has been developed for participants that are at a beginner to intermediate level of understanding of both lean and environmental sustainability foundations, and covers material relevant to employees from shop floor to toplevel management.

The workshop takes place from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. in room 309. Anyone wanting to take part is asked to register by Nov. 9. More information about the workshop, including cost, can be found at www.cme-mec.ca/ns.

For more information or to register, contact Jacqui Squires at 902-422-4477, or jacqui. squires@cme-mec.ca.