Lean and Green

Chapter 11Reuse: The Second Best Strategy in the RRR Trilogy

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We’ve added nothing to the landfill for eight years, except when disposing of a plating line or tank after we’ve cleaned it.

—Nirmal Singh, director,Environmental, Health, and Safety, ITT Cannon

WHEN I was in high school, a friend repeated to me what she had learned at her Mormon Church: the Earth can support unlimited human population growth if each family lives on and cultivates one acre of land. I remember wondering how it would be determined which family was assigned a plot in Death Valley and which received one in the south of France.

In reality, we humans are not equally dispersed around the planet. Where masses of us live, our natural resources are growing scarce, landfills ...