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FEATURE STORY

Go Green

There’s a change in the air and it’s becoming contagious among big and small business alike. Green initiatives at businesses can range from small efforts like recycling paper and ink cartridges to large international efforts to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. No matter what you do, the experts say it all adds up to a greener planet and often reduced costs to your business. But it begs the question; can going green actually generate enough ‘green’ to improve your business’ bottom line?

Wayne Auto Spa, a car wash and oil change facility in Wayne, NJ is committed to offering the best possible car care services while reducing their environmental footprint.

Owners Rob Burke and Rob Kaplan purchased the car wash in 2006 and had the idea to turn the company ‘green’ right from the start.

Principal owner Rob Burke is no novice to being a small business leader. With a background as an attorney specializing in business law, he also owned an advertising agency and now co-owns Wayne Auto Spa. Before he bought the car wash, Burke was already supporting green initiatives at home. He was the first in his neighborhood to put solar panels on his house. “Everyone in the neighborhood had questions and wanted to talk to us about it,” says Rob Burke, owner of Wayne Auto Spa in Wayne, NJ. “It was the beginning of an ongoing dialogue that we carried into our business model.”

Why go green?

Reasons to implement environmentally friendly policies run the gamut from positive pubic good will to reduced fuel and energy consumption. “Consumers are very savvy and can spot a company that’s just implementing a program to boost their sales,” says Burke. “If you are an effective communicator and you truly believe in the cause, not because it’s likely to elevate your prominence in the community, people react very favorably.”

Raising the bar on customer relations, Burke says that the environmental cause has brought him closer to many of his customers. “It creates a relationship that has a much higher degree of customer loyalty,” says Burke. The boon of good will was an unexpected surprise. “Every day at the car wash, I’m having at least three or four conversations about renewable energy that I didn’t even start. We’re initiating a dialogue about ways we can save our planet and that’s a tremendous inroad to change.”

But there are economic factors to going green that every business person needs to evaluate for themselves. Whatever program is implemented, business owners need to be sure that the program will be in the best interest of their company. “The cost to implement [a green program] is going to vary by state,” says Burke. “There are programs available in some states that are pretty generous toward implementing renewable energy products. We were very fortunate to be on the leading edge of these rebates and programs, and we were smart enough to take advantage of them.”

For small business the return on green investments is often over a long time horizon – sometimes as long as ten years. Leadership must be patient and have a passion for the cause advises Burke. “No other facet of my business has an ROI of five or even ten years, it just wouldn’t be cost-effective to do it,” says Burke.

When he decided to buy the car wash, he applied for rebates and permits before the deal was even final. The southern facing structure sat perfectly to benefit from the 58 solar panels that generate power for the facility. As he and his partner started to research the business more, they discovered other ways to integrate their philosophy into the business’ practices. Waste water from car washes is treated with an advanced filtration system to remove impurities and the company uses bio-degradable soaps and energy efficient lighting. The oil change portion of his business produces tons of dirty oil. One of the natural questions was how to eliminate the waste. The first option was to sell it, but that still required big heavy, dirty trucks, that make lots of their own pollution. Then they discovered special furnaces designed to use dirty motor oil to provide heat. Now the company recycles their dirty oil onsite using it to generate the entire year’s heating.

Going green can also drive public relations and marketing for the business. “The reality is that if you’re smart and you do it properly,” says Burke, “you can re-allocate your advertising budget and turn around and leverage that in the local media. I have a strong brand identity and I don’t spend the $20,000 I would have previously allocated to marketing on advertising.” Instead, he uses that $20,000 to invest in his environmental and conservation initiatives at the auto spa. This only works because of the significant amount of media coverage he’s received about his ‘green’ business. Burke warns business owners that to be successful they will need to actually develop those media relationships and create a story that has a unique angle.

 Take Green Opportunities and Make Hay

By making small shifts in the mix of merchandising offered, businesses can support their environmental message and find new opportunities to make money. Burke decided to eliminate bottled water sales in his storefront. He invested $500 in the purchase of Sig water bottles and thought if they didn’t sell that he would give them to friends and clients as gifts. To his surprise, they became one of the hottest sellers he has.

It’s Not Always Easy Being Green

Kermit the Frog had it right when he sang that famous little ditty from his lily pad in the pond. Wayne Auto Spa has been trying to gain permits to build a wind turbine on their property to generate more clean electricity from renewable resources. They’ve been faced with much opposition from town officials and neighbors. Concerns of the turbine being ‘unsightly, dangerous for birds, unsafe for children at the neighboring daycare (a fear of flinging winter ice), and noisy’ all have made the process increasingly more difficult to fight.

And they’re not alone. The issue of dealing with new ideas to solve old problems is not new to many businesses. Cape Wind is a wind turbine farm that would be located in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. If completed, it will be the 20 th largest man-made horizon in the world with 130 wind turbines covering a 24-square mile radius of the Horseshoe Shoal just seven miles off the coast of Hyannis, MA. Mired in legal and emotional debate for the last six years, Cape Wind has estimates that the project will run in excess of $700 million to implement if and when it’s passed. Even former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite, an outspoken opponent of the project has thrown his pith helmet into the ring. He opposes the project on the argument that Cape Wind will destroy one of the world’s most pristine waterways and that a commercial venture should not be using Federal waterways to make a profit.

There are numerous issues involved not only on the generation of energy but also on its transportation. There is a degradation of power over the distance it travels over the infrastructure (i.e. power lines). For example, it can take 1 kilowatt of power just to move power from the power plant to the house it needs to serve. “There’s an inherent benefit to generating the power onsite,” says Burke. “It’s a tremendously overlooked issue, but something that really makes sense from an economic and logical perspective. Why shuttle power hundreds of miles, when I can produce it in my own backyard?”

Of course, most small business people aren’t going to install a wind turbine on their commercial property to power their business. But that doesn’t mean that bucking the system of what’s always been done won’t cause a little ripple in your own organization. Take the team approach and make going green fun and you’ll quickly see employees join the cause. They may even carry the concepts through to their home lives. Hold contests to see how few pieces of paper can be used in a week or start a carpool program and see which team can carry the most passengers each month. No matter what you implement, remember that every little bit helps the cause.

Small Changes Add Up to a Better Environment

Here’s a list of simple things you can do.

• Change your light bulbs over to T5 energy efficient lighting. Lighting represents over 24% of all the energy consumed in commercial buildings. Compact fluorescents have mercury in them and require special disposal and clean-up if they’re broken. Energy Star-qualified compact fluorescent lights use about 75 percent less energy than older, incandescent bulbs.

• Eliminate bottled water and sell or provide reusable water bottles (like stainless steel or hard plastic like Nalgene or Sig). According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86% of plastic water bottles used in the United States end up in a landfill or becomes litter.

• Offer reusable sales bags. If you have a retail location, offer reusable bags and provide financial incentives for using them.

• Recycle ink and toner cartridges. Placed end-to-end, all the toner cartridges sold yearly in the U.S. would stretch from Washington, D.C. to California-and back again! That's a lot of waste (over 200 million pounds of it)! Recycled cartridges can also offer 30% to 50% cost savings.

• Reduce shipping costs and vehicle emissions. For businesses with a distribution system, re-evaluate how your product is shipped and received from vendors. Can you use more fuel-efficient vehicles in your fleet? Would satellite distribution centers help to shorten distances for delivery in the supply-chain? For employees, offer travel solutions and the ability to work from home or commuter rebates to take mass transit over driving.

• Reduce electric consumption. Computers and air conditioning units are tremendous energy hogs. Install ‘sleep’ modes on computers that will cut energy usage when not in use and investigate energy-efficient HVAC units. Set temperature controls at the most energy-efficient setting for your location.

• Use recycled and post-consumer recycled products. From paper goods and even pens to the types of office furniture you purchase, make sure that what you’re using is safe and leaves the smallest possible environmental footprint at the end of its life (i.e. waste). Every ton of recovered paper saves 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.  (www.paperrecycles.org)

Opportunistic Benefits

Burke says that the economic benefits may be small compared to the substantial opportunities that have come to him and his business since his environmental message has hit the mainstream in publications like the New York Times. He will be inking a deal with Castor Oil (owned by British Petroleum) to make Castor the exclusive oil in their oil change business. Castor’s interest was strictly a result of Wayne Auto Spa’s environmental messaging. “This isn’t an opportunity that would have been available to us without the great PR we’ve been receiving,” says Burke. “If you’re willing to make the investment and take a little leap of father, you’ll find that the dividends are going to surprise you on the upside.”

What’s the greatest upside to going green? “I can actually go to bed at night feeling that what I’m doing is important and makes a difference,” says Burke. And that may be the most important reason of all.

To learn more about green initiatives and how you can add them to your business’ vision, talk with a Fiducial Advisor by calling 866-FIDUCIAL or visit the web site at www.Fiducial.com.