GREEN GLOSSARY
“Wisdom is the capacity to know what we don’t know.” – Paul Hawken

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> Design for Disassembly – Designing a product to be dismantled for easier maintenance, repair, recovery and reuse of components and materials.

> Downcycling – The practice of recycling a material in such a way that much of its inherent value is lost (for example, recycling plastic milk jugs into faux-wood park benches).

> Eco-Efficiency – The ability to produce and deliver desirable, competitively-priced goods and services while progressively reducing the ecological impacts of them. Being “less bad;” reducing emissions, recycling, product reuse, emissions regulations and other “end of pipe solutions” that reduce environmental degradation but don’t stop it completely.

> Eco-Effectiveness – “Working on the right things instead of making the wrong things less bad.” (McDonough, William & Braungart, Michael. Cradle To Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things, 2002). A strategy for designing human industry that is safe, profitable, and regenerative, producing economic, ecological and social value. Eliminating the environmental problems from a products’ design altogether.

> Ecological Footprint – The resulting impacts on the environment based on the choices we make (raw materials selection, energy use, transportation, etc.).

> Ecosystem – The interaction of organisms from the natural community with one another and their environment to sustain one another.

> Embodied Energy – The total energy from all sources necessary to make a specific product, including the value of the product itself.

> Embodied Mass – The total quantity of mass of materials required to produce, recycle, or dispose of raw materials and products.

> Environmental Management System – An industry-developed and driven management structure that prioritizes compliance with environmental policy objectives and targets effective implementation of environmentally focused procedures. A key feature of an EMS is the preparation of documented systems, procedures, and instructions to ensure effective communication and continuity of such implementation. (See also “ISO 14000.”)

> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – The U.S. federal agency established in 1970 to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment – air, water, and land – upon which life depends.

> Environmentally Preferable – Products or services that have a lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment when compared with competing products or services that serve the same purpose. May consider raw materials acquisition, production, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, reuse, operation, maintenance or disposal.

> Fair Trade – An international trading partnership that seeks to help marginalized producers and workers achieve financial self-sufficiency by establishing direct lines of trade between producers and consumers, guaranteeing producers fair prices for goods, restricting exploitative labor processes, and favoring environmentally sustainable production processes through a system of labeling.

MTS Seating makes every effort to avoid “greenwashing” by complying with the Federal Trade Commission’s Part 260 Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims. Please feel free to contact Jennifer White, Sustainability Coordinator, or Dave Dimmer, Marketing Manager, with any questions or feedback.