In January this year top-end manufacturer Makita joined the Green revolution. Makita launched a campaign called “Drop Dead Batteries”. Yes, that’s actually what they have called it. Apparently they are unaware that joining the ideas of electrical power tool components and dropping down dead is not top of the Public Relations handbook. Nevertheless we should be impressed, surely. Well, sort of.
Up to a point it has to be a good thing. The nickel cadmium batteries are toxic nightmares. You mustn’t drop them because they leach harmful substances into the earth and you mustn’t landfill them for the same reason. You can’t incinerate them, because they release toxic fumes and they don’t make pretty household ornaments.
So recycling them is clearly the way forward. In fact Makita have even got celebrity builder Tommy Walsh involved, to say what a tremendous thing recycling old batteries is and how the trade needs to clean up its image. But you have to ask why Makita are so helpful all of a sudden. Well, why do you think?
The main reason they are interested in people disposing of their old batteries the moment they are ‘tired’ is that they have launched their new Lithium Ion battery (which they say is 40% lighter with 430% more life). So the initiative hasn’t exactly got wholly altruistic reasons behind it. Technical Director of Makita UK Andrew Bowden is happy to talk about the need for the industry, like Makita, to show its ‘responsible concern’ but there’s no mention of the fact that recycling batteries is a profitable sideline in itself.
The mobile phone manufacturers did this double hit in the late nineties. Selling a recycling initiative that was actually a separate revenue stream as a martyred commitment to the environment.
So let’s dig a bit deeper into Makita’s green credentials. After all, they started it. It’s normally a good idea, when a manufacturer of any sort begins singing about an environmental initiative, to look at what else they do. In the trade it’s known as the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility profile.
Makita’s, at least from what you can gather from the environment page on their website, is hopeless. They are a manufacturer, but there’s nothing about their manufacturing sites other than a general ‘commitment’ to working practices that’s so vague its laughable. Have they got an environmental accreditation like ISO 14001? Apparently not. Do they take steps to minimise the impact of producing their tools? Well they don’t mention any. Do they, in fact, even have an environment policy available on their website? No, there is nothing.
So you have to ask yourself whether this is, at its heart, just a piece of corporate green wash. A battery collecting initiative launched to coincide with a battery selling initiative. That may be harsh; after all, at least Makita have stepped up to the plate. At least (so the logic goes) they are willing to do something.
However it seems a shame, when they’ve generated a bit of momentum, to find that it’s the salesmen and not the management who are in the driving seat. If Makita really want to help the environment they need to improve the manufacturing processes of their big plants as well as helping to clear up the mess which, lets be honest, they made in the first place.