Save Cash, Save Earth » BedTimes Journal
How Mattress Recycling Council’s SP2 boosted income, sustainability and worker engagement at South Bay Worldwide.
What if there was a free manner to assist your organization reduce prices, generate extra income and be extra sustainable? Happily, there’s. The Mattress Recycling Council’s Sleep Merchandise Sustainability Program, SP2 for brief, helps California mattress producers cut back waste whereas growing operational efficiencies. This system was developed as a part of the trade’s dedication to environmental stewardship and enhances the Mattress Recycling Council’s efforts to advertise sustainability.
Within the free voluntary program, producers take a look at their merchandise and processes to see what they’ll do to scale back their environmental affect and create efficiencies that result in value financial savings. It additionally creates finest practices and defines metrics to trace progress.
“Sustainability in manufacturing isn’t nearly environmental affect; it’s about optimizing operational efficiency,” says Kate Caddy, director of sustainability for the Worldwide Sleep Merchandise Affiliation. “Incorporating sustainability helps establish inefficiencies, cut back waste and enhance efficiency. SP2 helps flip these efforts right into a structured system that drives value financial savings and long-term enterprise resilience. It builds on current practices, requires no new tools and gives sensible instruments, coaching and help.”
Whereas SP2 is at the moment solely obtainable within the Golden State, ISPA has plans to develop this system to different states. On June 11, South Bay Worldwide grew to become the most recent firm to attain SP2 certification. There are classes to be discovered from the latest success of the Rancho Cucamonga, California-based producer.
for resale on secondary markets.
Toby Konetzny, CEO of South Bay, discovered this system to be simple. “The shocking factor about this program was it was truly fairly straightforward to implement.”
Earlier than this system, South Bay had a couple of recycling efforts in place, however the firm was not monitoring metrics on waste, water or vitality. Prior to now 12 months, South Bay has seen important outcomes, together with decreasing its waste by 48%.
Consequently, South Bay decreased the frequency of its landfill dumpsters pickup — from twice per week to as soon as per week — and likewise eradicated one giant roll-off landfill container. (For reference, dumpsters are 4 cubic yards whereas a roll-off container is 40 cubic yards.) Collectively, these adjustments will save South Bay roughly $3,600 per 12 months.
South Bay decreased its water utilization by 21%, a giant deal in drought-prone Southern California. This abatement got here from decreasing the frequency of its panorama irrigation from seven days every week to a few per week and repairing water leaks inside its services. Additionally, when the corporate began monitoring its vitality utilization, South Bay recognized a special electrical energy fee plan that can save them about $4,800 per 12 months.
“Each facility has totally different ‘aha’ moments, and I’ve seen many nice examples,” Caddy says. “At South Bay, what stood out was how they used the SP2 instruments to establish key alternatives, made a plan and promptly took motion. Consequently, they made important progress towards their discount targets in a really quick time.”
Chris Moseley, director of producing and warehouse at South Bay, recommends that different firms implement SP2. “Not solely did administration study and grow to be extra conscious of waste, however our workers had been educated, as nicely,” he says. “I by no means knew how a lot we’d save by simply making a couple of changes to panorama watering schedules and adjusting thermostats. This system was self-explanatory, straightforward to implement and Ryan McMullan and staff had been all the time obtainable to reply questions and supply steerage.”
McMullan is MRC’s SP2 advisor and principal advisor with Lean Inexperienced Means in Lengthy Seaside, California.
One among SP2’s necessities is that firms share the teachings they discovered with a sister facility, group accomplice or provider. To fulfill this situation, South Bay plans to make use of the SP2 framework to implement adjustments at its manufacturing facility in Santa Theresa, New Mexico. “When you get the blueprint going, it is sensible to maneuver it onto your different services,” Konetzny says.
One other advantage of SP2? Strengthening worker engagement. At South Bay, workers had been all in on implementing this system. South Bay began baling its cardboard, foam and plastic for resale on secondary markets — one thing that each helps sustainability and generates extra income.
“One of many shocking issues that turned out from the SP2 program is the quantity of income that’s being produced by recycling,” Konetzny says. “We’re fortunate sufficient to be in an space the place we are able to promote our cardboard, our foam and our plastics, so our return on funding on the tools and the method got here again shortly — inside a couple of months. Now it’s grow to be a very nice income driver that we simply give again to the workers. So, worker engagement has been implausible, as a result of they know we’re going to have the ability to give them Fourth of July barbecues and items by means of our huge Christmas get together that we throw.”
Caddy finds it spectacular that South Bay reinvests the income from its recycling efforts to host worker appreciation occasions. “It’s a easy however highly effective method to present workers that their efforts matter and are making an actual affect on the enterprise,” she says. “It additionally builds engagement and reinforces a tradition of steady enchancment.”
The underside line, although, is that sustainability is simply good enterprise. “There are numerous issues that we are able to do which can be good manufacturing, good enterprise and make fiscal sense,” Konetzny says. “I believe what’s cool about SP2 is that it provides us the instruments to trace it. It’s already a template. It’s very straightforward for us to implement. It doesn’t take a variety of mind math to arrange a few of these issues.”
