Assessing a Company or Product Claiming to be Green
Sustainability is the Issue

Going “Green” with MOP 

Finding products and components that are sustainably made is a combination of measuring “footprints” and exercising good judgment and common sense. Here are some things that you should understand when assessing the “ green creds” of any product.

Choosing a green product in today’s environment is a challenging task. It’s important for two major reasons:

1. If you are sincerely working to reduce your company’s carbon footprint, or working toward measuring your triple bottom line, you want to be able to choose a company that has a truly sustainable product and manufacturing process.
2. Consumers and watchdog organizations have an increasing level of sophistication when it comes to products that claim some level of green-ness and are savvy when it comes to companies that are employing greenwashing techniques to position themselves in the market, but not really achieving a level of sustainability that reflects well on people who use their products.

Having said this, it is important to say that some common sense and good judgement needs to be employed in this process as well. For example: Subaru of America is arguably the greenest automobile company in the US today, even though they do not manufacture a single hybrid vehicle. Why is this? Because the sum total of all their environmental efforts and products add up to an impressive environmental record. They have no hybrids but among companies building cars in the US they have one of the highest MPG ranking across their fleet. Add to this, just in time and regionalized manufacturing and inventory systems that reduce their shipping and the fact that every one of their facilities in the US has achieved a zero carbon footprint and you see a total picture emerge that is more sustainable than you might expect at first blush.

So how do you measure the sustainability profile of a company that you are considering as a vendor?

Products and Processes

To begin with, you want to examine both their products and their manufacturing processes. The degree of sustainability for any product can run the gamut from a product that is completely carbon intensive from start to finish to a cradle-to-cradle green product that is produced sustainably and is completely green itself  - made from 100% recycled and natural products or fully recyclable.

Furthermore, it is certainly worth considering other factors that are relevant. For example a quart of strawberries grown in your community may be grown using a carbon-based fertilizer making them ineligible for the claim of organic. However, their carbon footprint is surely smaller than the same quart of strawberries grown organically but shipped across the country.

Every product is going to have a different story to tell based on its component parts, its manufacturing process and its recycle-ability. The choices you make will need to be based on both the goals of your company and the profile of your clients/customers in the context of other obvious considerations such as price points for the products, shipping issues etc.

Here at MOP we are very fortunate to have all of the factors working for us. We take some pride in having sustainability as a principle goal in our process, driving our decisions and helping us to define the paths that we have taken, and will continue to take, on product development; but some of our good fortune in this area was simply good luck. For example, often the cost of components that create a sustainable product line are more expensive in the marketplace, however, when we found that the basis for MOP’s aggressive oleophyllic fiber could be created from a Recovered Material, we knew that our production costs were going to be more manageable than with almost any other option. Additionally, because Recovered Materials are one of EPA’s highest priorities in the recycling arena, there are some additional advantages and public-policy preferences that give the product some added traction, particularly in the government-contracting arena. 

Ultimately, MOP achieves the highest possible level of sustainability, a cradle-to-cradle level by first utilizing only recycled and organic materials and employing a production process that uses green hydroelectric energy as its power source. Our claims regarding this can all be verified and validated allowing us the confidence to know that we will not be subject to claims of greenwashing or individuals and advocates questioning the validity of the claims or splitting hairs over whether the sustainability of the product is counteracted by the production process.

Download MOP's Green Credentials