Learning Objectives

• Analyze a process at your facility
• Implement and monitor a P2 goal
  

Putting P2 into Practice

Now that we’ve covered what P2 is, we’ll bring P2 from concept to practice. This can be difficult when just starting out, but there are four key steps to follow which make it a bit easier:

1. Plan - Identify a process or area and its inputs/outputs to highlight P2 opportunities
2. Do - Implement a goal
3. Check - Track your progress
4. Act - Improve or modify the P2 actions as needed

Plan - Identifying Potential P2 Opportunities

We’ll start with planning. The planning stage is about knowing your facility and where your focus is going to be. You’ll first need to choose a scope to be facility-wide, in a certain area of your facility, or on a specific process.   For example, you could focus on the garage area as a whole or zoom in on a specific process like brake cleaning. 

It’s recommended to start with a specific process, as you can build upon each process to make a facility's scope easier. 

Once you’ve chosen your scope, you’ll need to identify the inputs and outputs. Inputs are any materials, products, and/or resources, such as energy or water, that are entering the process. Outputs are products, byproducts, and/or waste being generated by the process. Here is a simple example of brake cleaning:

Knowing the inputs and outputs of a process is crucial to reducing waste as it helps form a full picture of what can be acted upon. You can see in the example figure that rags and brake cleaner are what can be acted upon. You can expand upon any process considerations by asking some additional questions:

• What safety protocols or equipment are required for the process?
• What spill-prevention techniques are utilized in this process?
• What administrative tasks are associated with the process?
• Is special training required to complete this process?
• Has the process been standardized?
• Are any of the inputs or outputs immediately harmful to staff or the environment?

Once you have identified all the inputs and outputs of a process, you can quantify the use/generation of the materials. For the example figure given, you may want to know the following:

• How many rags related to this process are being used in a week?
• How many brake cleaning services are completed during a week?
• What is the frequency of brake cleaner purchasing, and how much does it cost?
• What is the frequency of rag purchasing, and how much does it cost?

This will help you to prioritize which material you are going to develop a goal for. If you expand to more processes you will be able to compare the different processes. It should be noted that inputs may be used in many different services, such as both the rags and brake cleaner in the example figure. If you are unable to quantify the inputs and outputs, it’s not an issue. This in and of itself highlights a P2 opportunity where an additional level of tracking may be needed for your facility. You can still move forward without the quantities, it just may be a little more difficult to prioritize.

Inputs may be used in many different services, such as both the rags and brake cleaner in the example figure. If you are unable to quantify the inputs and outputs, it’s not an issue. This in and of itself highlights a P2 opportunity where an additional level of tracking may be needed for your facility. You can still move forward without the quantities, it just may be a little more difficult to prioritize.

With all of the information now readily available for your chosen process. It’s time to brainstorm! You would do this by considering all the different approaches to P2 that were highlighted in the previous lesson. We’ll go through each one from the perspective of our brake cleaning example and focus on the use of rags:

You’ll be able to go through each material and apply the approaches covered in the previous lesson. Let’s analyze the use of rags as an example:

• Process and Equipment Modifications
• Operational Changes
• Inventory and Material Management
• Material Substitutions
• Product Modifications

Process and Equipment Modifications

Rags are necessary equipment to complete the brake cleaning service. The rags are tossed into a hazardous waste labeled drum to be disposed of once used, which contributes to a large amount of our waste at the shop. Could we modify this process to use reusable rags instead?

Operational Changes

The difference in how used a rag is before being disposed of varies between staff. This was highlighted by how many rags were used per service, varying greatly from week to week.  Is there any standard for when a rag should be disposed of? Are there certain techniques that get more use out of an individual rag that staff could share?

Inventory and Material Management

Staff often grab new rags because they can’t find any other options in the shop. Is there a place or standard in place to share slightly used rags? 

The process for purchasing rags has not been reviewed in years. Is there a process for evaluating options based on quality, material, cost, and reusability?

Material Substitution

There aren’t any opportunities for substitution when looking at rags.

Product or Service Modifications

The service being performed can’t be changed or offered in a more environmentally friendly way.

The potential P2 opportunities that were identified are switching to reusable rags and standardizing the use and sharing of rags. With these identified, you’ll now detail how each of these opportunities would be implemented at your facility. This will identify the costs associated with the P2 opportunity. Let’s look at switching to reusable rags as an example:

Steps to Get Implemented

1. Identify that there is a laundering service in your area that can take solvent-contaminated rags
   • What is the cost of this service?
   • What is the frequency of pickup?
2. Set up collection bins for used rags and process for intake of laundered rags
3. Standardize the audit process to ensure rags don’t end up in the trash
4. Purchase reusable rags
   • Ensure enough quantity to facilitate pick up and return of laundered rags
5. Train staff on new disposal process for rags
6. You can identify the costs and time needed to implement the goal through these steps.

You can then use the quantities identified in the previous step to list the benefits of this opportunity: 

• Mitigating solvent-contaminated rags from being managed as hazardous waste and being disposed of.
• Reducing the cost of purchasing rags

You can then move on to another material for your process to add to the potential P2 opportunities. The costs and benefits of implementing the goal can then be weighed against each opportunity. The other topics in this training will give you a jump start on what potential P2 opportunities may be available at your facility. Once an opportunity is chosen, it’s time to get it implemented!

Do - Implementing a Goal

In this phase, you’re putting one of your planned P2 opportunities into action. All that work done in the planning phase should make this easy to get started and know what your next steps are. You’ll be able to see how effective your planning stage was and realize the available reductions that you identified. 

It’s important in this step to make sure you have clear due dates and are tracking your progress. The due date will give you a timeline for implementation and a goal to achieve. To track your progress, you’ll need to establish a starting point or baseline. Establishing baselines and tracking can be done through spreadsheets, logs, waste shipment manifests, utility meters/bills, and/or purchase orders. You don’t have to add additional burdensome processes to track!  

For the reusable rags example, the baseline number can be established by averaging the cost and number of purchased rags per month. From there, the cost and number of laundering services needed can be used to measure success. Each service will return a certain number of towels, and you can compare the costs against needing to purchase additional rags. The amount of waste diverted from the landfill is equal to the weight of rags sent off-site to be laundered.

Check - Analyze Your Progress

Once the P2 goal is in progress, you’ll want to routinely check in on the progress. The tracking from the previous step will set you up to do this. You can compare ongoing costs, waste generation, and/or material use to the previous process. If a P2 goal is not going according to plan or some issues have come up that are hindering progress, this is the time to identify the root causes of those issues. 

The root cause can be identified through a problem-solving tool such as a 5 why. A 5 why works by first defining the problem. Then, ask “why” questions to determine the root cause. Every “why” question should be confirmed (e.g., is there data/experiences that support this answer?). If the answer given can’t be confirmed, then a new answer is needed. A simple example of a 5 why is as follows with the example we were using:

In this example, you can see how your answer to the previous question and how it is confirmed can help to inform your next “why” question. The goal is to keep digging down until you get an actionable countermeasure. Once the countermeasure is identified, you can move on to the next step.

Problem: More rags have been used since the goal was implemented.

Act - Improve your Process

If no issues were found in the check phase, then this step will just be to sustain the goal and keep moving forward! If there was an issue and a root cause was identified, you can now implement the countermeasure to address it. There may be times when the goal is just no longer feasible for your facility. If improvements can’t be made to continue progress on the goal, you’ll have to drop the goal you are working on. When doing this, be sure to document why you were unable to implement the goal so that it can be revisited with the lessons learned and more resources are available to complete it.

The next lesson will include tips for success when trying to enact P2.