The Collins Companies is a family-owned company based in Portland Oregon, in the United States of America, and it deals with the processing of forest products. The company owns and a run sawmills hardware, lumber yards, and several retail hardware. The company also owns both hardwood and softwood forests certified by the Forests Stewardship Council. Due to the nature of the companies’ businesses, Collins has committed to upholding responsibility in environmental conservation especially about land and resource management. As a result, therefore, the company has sound sustainability strategies and policies that are aligned towards ensuring adherence to the company’s environmental preservation commitments.
Sustainability Measures
The company’s managerial team is pretty much aware of the detrimental effects of some of their waste products on the environment. As a result, therefore, The Collins Companies have installed measures within their premises which ensure that all the waste products are continuously recycled to a point where they cause negligible or totally no harm to the environment. For instance, sand dust was cited as the major air pollutant in regions where The Collins lumber yards had been installed. As a result, therefore, the company, with the help of a new team of production engineers, discovered that the same sand dust would be used to improve the quality of particle boards (Collins & Porras, 2012). Currently, all the sand dust produced is reused as a raw material in the production of particle boards, a move that has been found to significantly improve the quality of such boards. Particle boards were subsequently awarded by the Energy Trust of Oregon for being among the top 10 green building products in the United States of America. Similarly, the company has installed bio-filtration systems in all its premises to help clean the air from the lumber products plants before it’s finally released into the atmosphere.
Triple Bottom Line of the Collins Companies
Forests face a major threat of extinction if haphazardly harvested and such a scenario can be so costly to The Collins Companies. Therefore, to ensure sustainability, the company has measures in place to ensure that the companies do not run out of raw materials and hence consistency in production. For example, The Collins Company measures the volume of timber on their land once every decade to make sure that they do not cut more than what grows back. Similarly, the company practices selective logging where only those trees that are deemed by the company foresters as ready to come down are the ones harvested. To elaborate more, only those trees that might have stopped growing or their presence is established as stunting the growth of others are harvested. Hence, there are always sufficient raw materials to sustain consistent production.
Lumbering as an economic venture is a costly undertaking and if not well strategized can easily yield zero or negative returns. For instance, for one to produce forest products for export, certain permits and licenses are required to prove the legality of the business as well as ability to sustain both local and export market. The practice on forests products markets is that if a distributor or retailer deals in unlicensed products, he or she must seek license first before trading in such products. However, if the supplier or the producer is licensed, then there is no need for double licensing. To maximize its profits, The Collins Companies has all the necessary certifications and thus supplies Forest Stewardship Council – certified products. Similarly, the company has three major forests that are certified by the same council (Doppelt, 2010). It, therefore, means that the Company’s products easily fetch good prices on the market since they do not require any extra licensing for them to trade on whichever market.
References
Collins, J. C., & Porras, J. I. (2012). Built to last: Successful habits of visionary companies. New York: Collins Business Essentials.
Doppelt, B. (2010). Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for business, government and civil society. Sheffield, England: Greenleaf.
