From Blue Community Ambassador Salah El Sadi:
Is sustainability always what it seems?
Today at work, I noticed something that made me stop and think.
Our water dispenser is promoted as an environmentally friendly solution because it uses paper cone cups instead of plastic cups. On the surface, that sounds like a great sustainability initiative.
However, after watching people use it throughout the day, I observed something different.
Every time someone places a paper cone under the sensor, the dispenser automatically releases water before the cone is fully positioned. In many cases, the first 4–5 conefuls of water end up being spilled or discarded before the person can actually drink.
I witnessed this repeatedly with my own eyes.
This experience reminded me of an important lesson:
Sustainability isn’t just about replacing one material with another. It’s about looking at the entire system.
If a process saves plastic but wastes significant amounts of clean water every day, then there is an opportunity to improve the design.
Sometimes the biggest innovations come from simply observing everyday processes and asking:
“Can we do this better?”
As quality professionals and engineers, our responsibility is not only to identify defects in products, but also inefficiencies in processes that affect cost, resources, and sustainability.
Small observations can lead to meaningful improvements.
