Green Molding --- Toward “Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use” in molding factories（1）

1. “Green Molding” and “factor4”

Our association promotes “Green Molding”, which enables manufacturers in the global plastics industry to produce more; both in amount and value, while using less energy and material resources. This “Green Molding” will help solve our global environmental problems and world poverty and increase manufacturing profits at the same time.

In this article, I will explain the background and concept of “Green Molding”, and “factor4″. I will explain why these concepts are so significant to companies in the plastic molding industry.

Let’s imagine looking at our planet from outer space. What might you see as you look down from such a distance? What significant tides would you observe happening on our planet right now?

The first tide you might see is the explosion of our global population. With a rapidly expanding populous, the consumption of goods will also dramatically spike. The world population today is about 7 billion people. By the year 2050 it is projected to reach 9.2 billion! And it will increase further to 10 billion by the end of this century. At the same time the demand of goods in developing countries is increasing more rapidly than ever. In order to meet the demands of the increasing population, we must be able to produce a prodigious amount of things.

A second tide you would likely notice is the worsening of our global environmental problems. The fundamental causes of these problems revolve around human beings. We are already wasting natural resources way beyond what nature allows. And if we continue to ramp up the consumption of these resources, it will critically change our ecological system. Resources will become scarce or exhausted. Prices will spiral out of control. Problems such as global poverty will worsen dramatically.

In the midst of these two big global tides, what kinds of companies can survive and perhaps even thrive in such an environment? With the population growing explosively, we must find ways to manufacture more and more products to meet this demand. Most of these products will require plastics. This means our plastics industry has a great opportunity for growth. On the other hand, considering the balance of ecology, resource consumption must be reduced dramatically as well.

We believe that companies which find ways to “make more in amount and value” and “reduce resource consumption” at the same time, can survive and even prosper in such a severe business environment. The ability to achieve these goals, we believe, is one of the most important challenges of the next century. So in the plastic molding industry, we must realize the answer is “factor4″ through “Green Molding” practices.

Specifically, to balance our wealth and the ecology, we have to reduce the resource consumption by half and double the output. This means we need to achieve the 4-times resource efficiency. We call this “factor4*”

Our association’s goal is to realize “Green molding” with “factor 4” resource efficiency. But please remember “Green Molding” does not only help address environmental and poverty problems, but also will bring the molders the great advantages of halving costs and doubling profits. “Green Molding” is the key to win in this global competitive industry in this century.

In my next article, I would like to write about how much and how we waste resources in molding factories.
(To be continued.)

* factor 4
An ideology suggested by Amory B. Lovins and others. Aims to increase productivity of resources by 4 times by doubling wealth and halving resource use. This eventually leads to the recovery of balance between wealth and our environment.