Today is the last day of GreenWeek at 3form, a week focused solely on sus­tain­abil­ity. I’ve been employed for two months now and have had a total trans­for­ma­tion in my thoughts about what a cor­po­ra­tion can do about sus­tain­abil­ity in Utah. All it takes is a com­mit­ted team and some aggres­sive goals:

1. Stop send­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing waste to land­fill. Although chal­leng­ing, there have been some won­der­ful solu­tions to this prob­lem. In the last year more than 90% of 3form’s waste has been diverted to cre­ate new prod­ucts or become a sources of energy for other man­u­fac­tur­ing in Utah.

2. Be car­bon neu­tral by 2017. Okay, so for a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany, this is an extra­or­di­nar­ily aggres­sive goal con­sid­er­ing all of the chem­i­cals, raw mate­ri­als and energy needed to pro­duce translu­cent acrylics, resins and polyvinyls.

3. Increase recy­cled con­tent in the prod­ucts. Right now, most of the prod­uct lines con­tain 40% pre-​​consumer recy­cled con­tent, which is rev­o­lu­tion­ary for a mate­ri­als com­pany like 3form. We even have a line called 100 Percent that is made of 100% post-​​consumer plastics.

The level of trans­parency of 3form to the pub­lic about its poli­cies and actual results is sur­pris­ing, since most cor­po­ra­tions don’t like to spill the beans about the bad things that still need correcting.

Overall I’m thor­oughly impressed with the cul­ture sur­round­ing sus­tain­abil­ity at 3form, where it’s an every­day con­sid­er­a­tion instead of a “green washed” mar­ket­ing campaign.