Sustainability through building of green factories

Abstract

Establishment of Green Factories (GF) is considered as an effective mean of mitigating the negative impacts of industrial development. Yet in Sri Lanka, the voluntarily adaptation for such approach is hardly seen among the manufacturing companies, mainly due to their lack of awareness on the potential benefits and costs. Therefore, this study attempts to determine the effects of a GF on environmental benefits, employee perception and performance, and economical advantage to the company by selecting two factories (i.e. GF and a comparable normal factory) of an apparel manufacturer in Sri Lanka. Data were collected from equal numbers of randomly selected 60 factory floor employees and 20 factory floor staff in two factories using a self-administered questionnaire and interviews in addition to company records as secondary data. The results revealed that there are many benefits of GF to environment, employees, and economy of the company. The GF achieves environment sustainability through providing eco-friendly indoor and outdoor workplace environment; optimizing resource performance, including energy and water; and reducing, recycling and reusing wastes. In the GF, every employee enjoys fresh air, better light, comfortable surroundings, and beautiful outdoor views of intact nature. This improves employee health, wellbeing and productivity. The company is benefited economically from reducing costs; improving employee productivity and quality of work; reducing employee absenteeism rate and turnover; and improving brand equity.