Safe greening: growing profits and values for your company

David Omaghomi, HSE’s Senior Environmental Consultant, discusses how understanding the world of waste could have a significant impact on your company.

Environmental, financial and regulatory impacts of waste generation, treatment and disposal are a major concern to oil and gas, power generation, construction and manufacturing industries especially. Implementing an enterprise wide 'green' project could be the way to increase your company's bottom line whilst adding values.

Since the industrial age, waste generation and its impacts remain an inexorable outcome of operational activities; with the attendant implications like treatment and disposal costs, reputation management, liabilities and regulatory issues that could arise from environmentally unfriendly practices.

Over the past decade, concepts that focus on environmental stewardship have gripped the collective intellect of humankind, challenged our capacity to be self-aware, and established a common global imperative to respond to critical issues that arise from world-wide climate change and natural resource conservation.

Yet, while most enterprises have already undertaken some form of 'green' initiative, very few have established an enterprise-level 'green' strategy that responds to the new global imperative. It is critical that they assess all initiatives and make targeted investments to ensure the highest possible return without adding to the overall cost base.

But before decisions and investments are made, senior leadership must be able to clearly state the green agenda's current status, the short- and long-term goals of the portfolio, and how the green strategy aligns with the business' strategy.

Each company needs to chart its own course, because following an industry leader's path is not a prudent decision in moving a green agenda forward. A key component in this process is an 'honest broker' that helps assess and understand where the organisation stands on the sustainability maturity pathway. Current priorities and applicable requirements will then dictate the appropriate steps toward implementing the green agenda.

To help proponents experience the immense benefits of environmental stewardship, HSE has developed numerous client specific environmental improvement management projects that help you understand your current state of green value potentials, identify opportunities, as well as implementing and monitoring their compliance.

During the course of implementing your green programs, several distinct and important functions that are not being performed well or at all may be identified and addressed through specific environmental infrastructure enhancements, or through investments in the capabilities of the organisation's human or information management resources.

Conducting a purposeful knowledge or skill building initiative is often a critical activity on the pathway to improved environmental and business performance, requiring timely and high quality information. Hence, information management analysis and improvement activities can play a pivotal role in helping your organisation to meet its environmental improvement goals and communicate its accomplishments efficiently, clearly, and credibly to all interested stakeholders.

From experience, corporations that are environmentally sound create additional value for stockholders through being less risky business entities and therefore, being accorded a lower cost of capital. This shows that firms that improve their environmental management system and their future environmental performance will be able to increase shareholder wealth.

With decades of experience, our solutions not only promote the development and dissemination of standardised approaches to environmental management, they also embrace the concepts of sustainability and eco-efficiency, in which industrial activities are critically examined in terms of raw material, water, energy, and non-renewable resource use, as well as relative to more conventional aspects such as toxic pollutant emissions and waste generation.

Our fine blend of expertise and flexibility in managing a wide range of Environmental Health & Safety projects for multi-sector clients in African communities are cost effective, easy to implement and proven to boost your company's values whilst improving profit margins - the core concern for managers.

We would be glad to conduct a free assessment of your facility or operations and provide you with an easy to understand report that can guide you toward choosing the right solution for your company. Just a request for same by email will do the magic.

David Omaghomi is a Senior Environmental Consultant with HSE Management Ltd and is currently the Environmental Co-ordinator for Sterling Oil Exploration & Energy Production Co. (Operator of Nigeria's OPL 277 & 280 fields)

Confident that widespread disrespect for public Environmental Health & Safety slows Africa's development; He has led several public and private projects that help impacted communities and add profits + values to the clients.