The Three Rs

Sustainable, environmental issues have moved from the nice-to-haves, for marketing purposes, to the must-haves. There are three Rs that are common among companies that are on the green path – reduce, renew and recycle.

Reduce your resources to lower the bottom line. Kraft Foods for example has reduced water used in manufacturing processes by more than three billion gallons (nearly 12 billion liters) in three years. This amount of water is enough to fill nearly 5,000 Olympic swimming pools.

Seek renewable sources. Packaging companies Braskem and Acinplas are supplying green polyethylene from a 100% renewable source to create a resin that is used to manufacture perforated bags to package food.

Recycle containers and materials. Thai Beverage for example collected about 700 to 1,000 million beer bottles each year and recycles the bottles five to 10 times (see story in pages 38-40).

At the heart of these measures is for regulators and manufacturers to have concerted efforts in ensuring the sustainability of the environment, so that they can achieve their goals, and not depleting the resources of tomorrow today.