The cost of being Green
Read the article "Recovery Act Adds 6,500 Greener Vehicles to USPS Fleet". And was quite excited to see the big step taken by USPS. This shows the commitment of US Government towards Green. The agency USPS ordered 14,105 fuel-efficient vehicles last month at a cost of $210 million. Quite an amount to be spent and this kept me thinking how much does it cost to be Green?
In addition to automobiles, the common gadgets that we use in our daily life like mobiles, mp3 players, DVD players, camcorders and so on are all also built using materials which are currently under green compliance radar. Now, it makes me wonder that how much of compliance can we actually bring in to develop green components and will it be cost effective? Having experience of various manufacturing process my personal opinion is that we can actually make greener products however we may not be able to produce something completely environmental friendly. And that would be too hypothetical statement.
I thought about it and came to the conclusion that there are various ways where one can actually reduce cost and still develop a green product or rather I should say a cost effective green product. For example, while take back and dismantling the product it is easy to identify the components which can directly be reused, some other could be re-manufactured ( well trade-off has to be decided on cost i.e. whether it is cost effective to produce new one or re-manufacture the old one) and some can be disposed off responsibly.
This was at the end of life and the best part is if one can consider greener aspects while designing the end becomes more friendly and easy. That again re-instate the fact that trade-off at the beginning can actually give leverage at the end.
Bottom line: More responsible the producer is, the more greener and cost effective products can be expected from them.
