Page 89 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

HERMAN MILLER

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Nonetheless, the firm did exactly that, willing to suffer
any reversals in sales that occured.

The firm has taken an active stance on recycling. It has
reduced packaging and built an $11 million waste-to-
energy heating and cooling plant that has cut its hauls to
landfills by 90 percent. When Joe Azzarello, the engi-
neer who oversees the firm's vast-to-energy plant, found
out that there wasn't a good way to recycle the 800,000
styrofoam cups that employees used each year, he banned
them and handed out 5,000 mugs with this Buckminster
Fuller admonition: "In spaceship earth there are no pas-
sengers, only crew." The company recycles leather, vi-
nyl, foam, office paper, phone books, and lubricating oils.
Now it is trying for cradle-to-grave design that will al-
low recycling of all parts of its products.

The bottom line for Herman Miller is that all of these
actions save it tremendous amounts of money. The waste-
to-energy plant saves $750,000 a year in fuel and landfill
costs. Reduced packaging saves the firm over a million
dollars a year. And recycling and selling waste products
saves $900,000 a year.

Source: David Woodruff, "Herman Miller: How Green is My Factory?" Business Week,
September 16, 1991, pp. 54-56.

redesign pizza boxes. The program suggested changes in
shapes and materials that led to a box that keeps pizza warm
three times as long as conventional boxes.''

36/10. DEADLINES
Since many creative individuals work best under pressure,
deadlines are extremely effective in generating alternatives
and inspiring creative work. A deadline increases pressure
and stimulates more right-brain activity.

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