Millipore
Sustainability at Millipore
David Newman began the scenic drive back from Millipore’s manufacturing plant in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, to his office at corporate headquarters in the Boston suburbs. He had spent the morning with the plant’s engineers touring their latest solutions to increase recycling of water and chemicals in the manufacturing process. Newman was encouraged by how many innovative ideas were emerging at the Jaffrey plant and Millipore’s other facilities to improve their environmental performance, and was delighted that most of the ideas also reduced operating costs to such an extent that the investments required had short payback periods. It was another example of how far the company had come in the two years since Millipore’s Chairman, CEO, and President Martin Madaus had announced his desire to shift the company onto a path toward environmental sustainability. After receiving some positive feedback from the few senior managers with whom he initially shared this idea, Madaus had moved ahead by creating a Sustainability Initiative and appointing Newman to a new role of director of sustainability to lead the development and implementation of the corporate-wide initiative. Since then, Newman had been working with engineers and managers at Millipore facilities around the world to develop and implement projects to reduce the company’s environmental impacts. These efficiency projects had reduced electricity consumption by over 5 million kilowatt hours (KWh) per year, eliminated the need for 35,000 therms of natural gas per year, and reduced water consumption by 113 million gallons per year.
Newman was thinking about his next quarterly meeting with Madaus where he would be discussing progress to date and his future plans for the Sustainability Initiative. While Newman was pleased with the initiative’s accomplishments, he believed that most of these initial projects involved picking “low-hanging fruit.” Looking ahead, Newman saw fewer such “win-win”
David Newman began the scenic drive back from Millipore’s manufacturing plant in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, to his office at corporate headquarters in the Boston suburbs. He had spent the morning with the plant’s engineers touring their latest solutions to increase recycling of water and chemicals in the manufacturing process. Newman was encouraged by how many innovative ideas were emerging at the Jaffrey plant and Millipore’s other facilities to improve their environmental performance, and was delighted that most of the ideas also reduced operating costs to such an extent that the investments required had short payback periods. It was another example of how far the company had come in the two years since Millipore’s Chairman, CEO, and President Martin Madaus had announced his desire to shift the company onto a path toward environmental sustainability. After receiving some positive feedback from the few senior managers with whom he initially shared this idea, Madaus had moved ahead by creating a Sustainability Initiative and appointing Newman to a new role of director of sustainability to lead the development and implementation of the corporate-wide initiative. Since then, Newman had been working with engineers and managers at Millipore facilities around the world to develop and implement projects to reduce the company’s environmental impacts. These efficiency projects had reduced electricity consumption by over 5 million kilowatt hours (KWh) per year, eliminated the need for 35,000 therms of natural gas per year, and reduced water consumption by 113 million gallons per year.
Newman was thinking about his next quarterly meeting with Madaus where he would be discussing progress to date and his future plans for the Sustainability Initiative. While Newman was pleased with the initiative’s accomplishments, he believed that most of these initial projects involved picking “low-hanging fruit.” Looking ahead, Newman saw fewer such “win-win”