In the guest post below, Julie Urlaub, Founder and Managing Partner at Taiga Company, discusses how investment recovery contributes to corporate sustainability.
A key component of business sustainability is asset disposition, or investment recovery. Investment recovery is the practice of recouping the value of assets no longer needed by a company by identifying and reusing or disposing of surplus assets.
Corporations in virtually every industry have investment recovery departments, including utilities, chemicals, food processing, forest products, petroleum and gas, metals, government, educational institutions, electronics, pharmaceuticals, transportation and consumer products. Depending on the industry, asset categories can include equipment and machinery, manufacturing, repair and operations supplies, obsolete and/or discontinued materials, by-products and waste, buildings and land.
The effectiveness of investment recovery as a contributing sustainability concept includes whether or not environmental principles and policies are clearly stated, ongoing sustainability initiatives are in place, green supply chain programs are embedded in the organization, and if a commitment to reducing green house gas emissions is stated. Investment recovery programs play a vital role in a sustainability business strategy:
Economic: As far as the bottom line in concerned, a goal of the investment recovery team is to “maximize” the corporation’s return on surplus assets through redeployment and sales efforts. Value generation includes redeployment, inventory reduction and associated cost savings, such as storage costs, maintenance costs, and taxes.
Environmental: Surplus assets which can be redeployed within the corporation or sold externally for future “functional” use avoids the disposition of these assets to scrap yards or landfills. The sale of assets via online disposition avenues, such as online auctions, further reduce environmental impact by eliminating the logistics of moving the equipment to a central “staging area” as well as offers online viewing capabilities. Click here to continue reading.
Guest post provided by 3BL Media
Image credit: Jeffhubbard via Flickr under a CC license
