The market benefit of sustainable manufacturing makes for a constant temptation for the "green talk" to outpace the "green walk." To combat this inevitable tendency, manufacturers like Minnesota's 3M make sure that its successes must pass muster with tough, in-house environmental marketing watchdog groups that serve as "anti-greenwashing" resources, ensuring that any claim staked can be backed up by solid data. Keith Miller is the manager of 3M Environmental Health and Safety at 3M, and was generous enough to pass on some of this internally vetted information -- including a description of 3M's billion-dollar-saving 3P program -- to the IW readership.

Company Programs

IW: How are you addressing energy efficiency?

Miller: Our energy efficiency efforts date back to 1973, when we formed the 3M Energy Management Department. Improvements result from employee programs that increase energy efficiency of existing operations, new equipment and facilities designed to be energy efficient, and the development of new, more energy efficient 3M products and processes. Our new product development teams work to improve the energy efficiency of 3M products using Life Cycle Management. The teams consider energy efficiency in their choices of raw materials, product formulations and manufacturing processes.

To drive continuous improvement in energy management, we set a goal to improve energy efficiency by 20% from 2005-2010. This goal is on top of previous energy efficiency efforts, which have achieved 80 percent improvement in energy efficiency at 3M's U.S. operations since 1973 and 37 percent improvement in energy efficiency at 3M's operations worldwide since 1998.

During 2006, 3M reduced energy use by 11 percent from its 2005 base year and achieved annual energy savings of $25.6 million by means of 278 employee-inspired projects. We continue to adopt new methods to improve energy-efficiency, including the use of alternative, renewable energy.

So far, 3M has achieved:

• 80 percent improvement in energy efficiency at our U.S. operations since 1973.
• 37 percent improvement in energy efficiency at our operations worldwide since 1998.
• 11 percent improvement in energy efficiency from 2005-2006.

Our Brookings, S.D. facility recently replaced its existing fume incinerator with a highly energy efficient regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO) connected to a heat recovery steam generator. The Brookings plant now captures and destroys an additional 1.3 million lbs of solvent vapor per year. Natural gas consumption, both to destroy the solvent emissions and to generate plant steam, has been reduced by approximately 220,0000,000 BTUs/yr, an 84% reduction. This directly results in 11,684 prevented tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

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