ZWIJNDRECHT, BELGIUM -- When 3M's European chemical plant here recently switched from a polluting solvent to a safer but more expensive water-based substance to make the adhesive for its Scotch brand Magic tape, it was not to satisfy any environmental law in Belgium or the 12-nation European Community.
Part of the policy is founded in corporate public relations, a response to growing customer demand for "green" products and environmentally responsible companies. But as many U.S. multinationals with similar global environmental policies are discovering, cleaning up waste, whether voluntarily or as required by law, can cut costs dramatically.
"Environmental compliance doesn't have to be a penalty," said Usama Jayussi, European regional manager of CH2M Hill Co., an engineering consulting firm that advises U.S. and European companies how to comply with pollution laws. "It can be an opportunity."
"It's both good environmental and corporate policy," said Jack Doyle, senior analyst for Friends of the Earth in Washington.
In 3M's case, it is not clear yet whether the change in how it manufactures Magic tape, prompted by U.S. environmental laws, will save 3M money in Europe.
But whatever happens with Magic tape, St. Paul, Minn.-based 3M, a pioneer in the global environmental approach, already has saved nearly $600 million in the last 18 years on similar changes in its manufacturing process, including $100 million overseas.
Since 1975, 3M's "Pollution Prevention Pays" program -- or "3P" -- has cut the company's air, water and waste pollution around the world in half.
Less waste has meant less spending to comply with pollution-control laws. But in many cases 3M actually has made money selling wastes it used to have hauled away. And, because of recycling prompted by the "3P" program, it has saved money by not having to buy as many raw materials.
The company also has earned significant goodwill by providing local communities with details about pollutants its plants are producing.
"If you're open about it, you don't get as much backlash," said Dean Dworak, plant manager at the Zwijndrecht facility. Dworak boasted that his plant's treated waste water is cleaner than the river into which it is dumped. "Every time we put waste water into that river, it gets cleaner," he said.
AT&T Chairman Robert Allen has followed a similar path. In 1990, he set voluntary goals for the company's 40 manufacturing and 2,500 non-manufacturing sites worldwide.
According to its latest estimates, AT&T has reduced toxic air emissions, many caused by solvents used in the manufacture of computer circuit boards, by 73 percent.
Emissions of chlorofluorocarbons -- gases blamed for destroying the ozone layer in the Earth's atmosphere -- are down 76 percent, the company said. Manufacturing waste has been reduced 39 percent, it said.
Xerox Corp. said it has focused on recycling materials in its global environmental efforts.
It provides buyers of its copiers with free United Parcel Service pickup of used copier cartridges, which contain metal-alloy parts that otherwise would wind up in landfills. The cartridges and other parts are now cleaned and used to make new ones.
Other recycled Xerox copier parts include power supplies, motors, paper transport systems, printed wiring boards, paper transport systems and metal rollers. In all, 1 million parts a year are remanufactured. The initial design and equipment investment was $10 million. Annual savings total $200 million.
Sometimes simple reforms produce dramatic results. Take recycling waste paper. Every ton of paper recycled saves 17 trees and as much as 24,000 gallons of water, prevents 60 pounds of air pollutants and saves 41,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough to power a home for six months, corporate studies show.
AT&T recycled 45 million pounds of waste paper last year, enough to fill more than 1,100 garbage trucks. Computer printouts and office stationery were obvious targets, but the company also said it saved magazines, newspapers, corrugated boxes and even shareholder newsletters.
In all, by recycling, the company said it saved the equivalent of 382,000 trees.
It also saved $3.4 million in 1991 and $4.6 million last year, according to AT&T's estimates.
In most of its European offices, though no law requires it, AT&T brochures and external publications are printed on recycled stock. Soon all internal administrative documents will be too, it said.
Even when the amount of waste paper collected does not seem to warrant a recycling effort, the paper is not just tossed away.
At Istel, a British subsidiary of AT&T, for example, the small amount of waste paper generated is offered to local schools, which sell paper from AT&T and other sources to recyclers to supplement cash-strapped budgets.
"It all boils down to good management," said David Owen of Ecofin, a London-based environmental financial services firm that has created a stock fund of firms that offer creative, "green" solutions. "After all, generating waste means you're being wasteful."
