Reasons for work on sustainable development

Our company is part of the continued decline of the US textile business. Part of our strategy to survive the destruction of the domestic textile industry by globalization has been a transformation of our textile-based technology into non textile areas. In the 1980's-1990's, our company spent a lot of money on 'green chemistry' and developing greener processes for textile wet processing. We also were responding for new limitations on the aquatic toxicity of textile wastestreams. This account has been published in the Journal of Cleaner Production 12 (2004) 585-601 in an article that I co-wrote with Larry Ausley of NCDWQ.

As we have moved through our transformation by creatively transforming our textile business, what we have discovered is that the efficiencies and process improvements made in our quest to become more sustainable, are indeed robust business assets that have aided in the change processes within our company. Many of narrowly defined technical issues that were specific to textiles have not translated into long-term assets, but...many of the greener improvement have translated.

I think that this may be one of the major reasons that manufacturing firms should work to be socially responsible...not for marketing or advertising but to produce durable business advantages.