Awareness of environmental waste in industry - the perspective of environmental experts

This article aims to evaluate the level of awareness regarding environmental waste in a manufacturing company, as perceived by its environmental experts, and to examine how this awareness translates into specific actions taken by the organization to minimize such waste. Additionally, the article aimed to assess the level of understanding of the Green Lean concept among the surveyed environmental experts. The research was conducted as an auditorium survey among 44 environmental experts employed in one of the largest manufacturing companies in Poland, specifically in one of the factories, operating in the automotive industry. The level of awareness of environmental waste in the company was assessed as moderate to high, while the level of understanding the Green Lean concept among environmental experts is low. The article is a valuable source of guidelines for manufacturing companies on numerous practices aimed at combating environmental waste. These practices can be adopted by other organizations, with particular emphasis on three levels: infrastructure solutions, organizational activities and communication actions. Moreover, the article proves that even in an experienced and mature organization in terms of environmental and energy management, the seemingly popular concept of Green Lean may not be widely known. As the study was conducted in a single organization, its findings may not be fully generalizable to other contexts. Moreover, the use of self-reported data introduces a potential risk of respondent bias. Future research may focus on developing tools to measure Green Lean awareness and maturity in line with ISO 14000, assessing the impact of implementations on environmental performance, and comparisons between industries and SMEs. So far, there is no empirical research on the awareness of environmental waste and Green Lean concept in organizations in the literature on the subject and this gap is about to be filled by this article.