Vision: Howland Greene is the environmental consultant of choice for companies profiting from their sustainable business practices.

Mission: Our mission is to guide our clients through the expanding universe of product environmental regulations, assuring that they meet their environmental goals, profit from their investment and receive positive environmental recognition as they develop sustainable business practices.

Profile: Howland Greene is a Boston area based, principal owned consultancy with broad environmental knowledge and experience. We specialize in product environmental requirements, material restrictions, product take back requirements, managing for climate change and sustainability reporting. We can bring the appropriate expertise to assure our clients a seamless, cost effective business solution.

Businesses today are challenged by the economy and the environment. Even if you don’t operate factories, concerns over the chemicals in your product or the environmental impact of your business are routine customer enquiries or part of their purchasing specifications. Companies have to manage environmental issues as part of their business even if the impact is from some offshore manufacturing plant or, more importantly, when the impact is when your customer uses your product. This may seem like a daunting task and it is if you simply react to every new requirement with the hope that it may not apply to you. Even if regulation does not directly apply to your business, customers and consumers are making the requirements apply through their purchasing choices.

In response to global environmental concern, numerous regulations and requirements have emerged to reduce the environmental impact of business activities. What has emerged is an alphabet soup of regulatory acronyms and specific requirements for reducing the impact of many products that are central to the business economy. What once only concerned the manufacturing plant is now a business issue for brand owners, companies who only design the product or only put their name on it, or retailers who only sell the product. To manage these critical business issues, companies need to integrate this new group of product environmental requirements into their business plan. This requires understanding of how these requirements apply to your business. And, yes, you can learn as you go, but it may be after your competitor has taken a significant customer from you. Don’t wait until your customer is at risk because you will need a year to gather data and make the design changes that your competition has already done.

Some of the product environmental questions you should be prepared for:

• What role does your business play in Global Climate Change? What is your Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventory? Will you have to report CO2 emissions? Where do these environmental requirements fit into your Supply Chain Management Plan? The answer is not too little to worry about.
• Will a Carbon Footprint be required for your business or products?
• What energy efficiency standards apply to your products? (The EU is making this a requirement. The US will follow.)
• Are Eco design and the CE Mark part of your European market requirements?
• Are you prepared to make RoHS conformance an element of your CE Mark process?
• Do you have a robust material declaration process that address chemical in your products?
• What are the design and financial impacts if your packaging or product are part of a material restriction or take back program?
• How will you demonstrate that you have a sound environmental program if sustainability is a customer purchasing requirement?
• Can you describe the green elements of your business without green wash? Are your environmental claims based on Federal Trade Commission guidelines or other national guides?
• Do environmental purchasing standards such as EPEAT create an advantage for your products?
• Do you report your sustainability efforts? Does your Sustainability Report meet accepted international standards?

All these requirements work down to your bottom line. You can approach them blindly as an added cost of doing business (subtracting from your bottom line), or you can use them to create product advantage because you know where the market is going (adding to your bottom line).