You can be lean without being explicitly green, but it is difficult to be as green as is possible without lean and systems thinking and without a client that wants a sustainable product.
What does green mean in this context?
For us green is a shorthand label for construction products and processes that minimise their impact on our fragile environment. It seems to us that lean is a valuable set of ideas for organisations that have declared their intention to learn to live within sustainable limits. For those that have not yet made that commitment lean will anyway enable clients to reduce their spend on heating, lighting and ventilating the built environment and constructors to reduce the costs of creating what clients and owners want.
© Alan Mossman & Tariq Abdelhamid 2009