Greening your business

Various approaches to make environmental courtesy pay dividends to your bottom line

Story by Sean Fitzgerald

 IF PINK IS, IN FACT, THE NEW BLACK in the fashion industry, then it’s not too much of a stretch to argue that green is the new black in business. Black – as in the bottom line, building a market, and showing a profit.

Going green – that is, making an environmental case for changes in the products one buys and the processes they employ – has evolved into the trend du jour for U.S. businesses in recent years as media coverage of environmental stewardship and sustainability echoes back to the awareness it once had in the 1970s. But this movement didn’t just emerge because corporate citizenry joined hands to give Mother Earth a hug and sing Kumbaya.

While it would be conscientiously satisfying to believe all businesses employing green initiatives are doing so out of a desire to restore harmony and spiritual balance to the world in which we live, the fact of the matter is that respecting the environment had just been more expensive than the traditional paradigms of production and consumption.

“The missing piece to sustainability and environmental stewardship is that it usually cost more money and didn’t provide an effective return on investment. The business community wasn’t going to embrace the environment until the economics of it made sense,” said Stephen Heins, a nationally-renowned voice of the energy efficiency industry and owner of The Word Merchant, a Sheboygan-based communications consulting firm that specializes in, among other areas, environmental stewardship.

Today more than ever before, the economics of green do make sense. A variety of energy efficient devices may sometimes cost more money up front than a traditional energy-guzzling counterpart, but the longer term savings on energy costs can more than make up for the difference. Government-financed rebates and tax incentives for purchasing certain products help to shorten the timeframe of a return on investment.

Lastly, the intangible goodwill that accompanies acts of environmental courtesy such as employee pride and customer dedication are certain to pay long-term dividends that will make a tangible impact on the bottom line.

“It’s become much easier for businesses to think about sustainability,” Heins said.

With that notion in mind, there are a variety of small efforts any business can employ today to get on board with green initiatives, and some simple tips to communicate these efforts to employees and customers.

Buy green products

BUYING RECYCLED AND ENVIRONMENTALLY sensitive products for use in your business operations doesn’t have to cost much more than you’re already spending and offers a first small step to greening your business.

In some cases, buying green might save your business money when compared with more traditional products you might purchase.

Case in point, consider all the inkjet and toner cartridges for your printers, fax and copy machines that are thrown out during the course of the year. Office products industry research indicates an estimated eight ink cartridges per second are thrown into landfills in the U.S., said Ron Hasselbacher, owner of the Cartridge World franchise in Oshkosh. His store exclusively remanufactures and refills inkjet and toner cartridges to return them to like-new condition – and does so at nearly half the cost of buying a cartridge brand new from a retail vendor.

“The whole concept of refilling and remanufacturing is becoming more widely accepted,” said Hasselbacher, noting the Cartridge World franchise grew from 850 stores five years ago to more than 1,600 stores today. “Why buy a new cartridge when all you need is the new ink.”

Citing industry data, Hasselbacher said it takes about three-fourths of a gallon of oil to produce the plastic materials in one larger-sized toner cartridge, similar to kind in an office’s high-volume printer and copier. Since his store opened in 2004, Hasselbacher said customers come in just to drop off a collection of used-up cartridges they’ve been holding on to, simply because they hate to throw them in a landfill. One individual a few years back came in with more than 50 used-up cartridges.

Purchasing pads of recycled paper can save on trees and other resources used in the papermaking process. But finding recycled paper hasn’t been easy for a consumer until recent years. Today, a new crop of specialty retailers like Just Act Natural on College Avenue in downtown Appleton make green living less of a chore for individuals valuing environmental sustainability as a lifestyle.

J.C. Paustian and his wife, Dianne, opened Just Act Natural this past April 22 – Earth Day – but in doing their due diligence more than two years ago, they learned that cost doesn’t always have to be a factor driving consumers’ decisions to buy green. While attending the Appleton Farmer’s Market downtown on Soldier’s Square in 2007, the couple staffed a booth to conduct a survey asking farmers market patrons about their purchasing preferences for earth-friendly products. What they learned surprised both of them, J.C. Paustian admitted.

“Many of the people we spoke to said they’re willing to pay between 10 percent to 20 percent more for a green product than their conventional counterpart,” he said. That’s reassuring, because a number of the products the Paustians provide at Just Act Natural – from paper and pens to cleaning supplies, children’s toys, clothing and personal hygiene items – are often produced by smaller manufacturers who can’t necessarily compete on the basis of cost-of-goods-sold to say, Proctor & Gamble, as an example. As a result, some green products end up costing a bit more.

Paustian says his shop sells its customers more than just a product, but sells a lifestyle. He recognizes large grocery stores have a section of environmentally sensitive shampoos and lotions, for example, or that big box office supply retailers have been growing their inventory of recycled products. In fact, Paustian said there’s virtually a green counterpart to every single item available in a big box department store.

“But you could never find all these things in just one place. You can here,” Paustian said, arguing Just Act Natural’s niche is serving as “a mini department store of green goods.”

Purchase green services

A FEW SUBTLE MODIFICATIONS to your financial services can also make a noticeable impact, and likely less trips to the dumpster hauling bags of trash or shredded paper.

Bank statements, credit card statements and investment account statements almost universally offer customers an option for a paperless statement, often delivered via email as a digital file.

After three years of offering paperless “eStatements” to its members, CitizensFirst Credit Union in Oshkosh and Fond du Lac launched a promotion this past April to encourage members to give up their paper account statements sent via mail each month. Those making the switch to an eStatement received tickets to a Wisconsin Dells water park. With a goal of challenging 550 members to make the switch, CitizensFirst signed up nearly 1,300 members by the end of April, extending the promotion a few more weeks into May to finish with more than 1,750 members converting to paperless.

The overall impact – about 900 pounds of paper will be saved during the course of the year, wrote CitizensFirst CEO Carla Altepeter in an email to employees, as well as savings on water, gas and the avoidance of greenhouse gases produced in the delivery of paper statements by mail.

Such statistics play a highly visual role in communicating the green efforts of your business, said Heins. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers a variety of calculators for determining the amount of greenhouse emissions saved, amount of forest preserved, and other sustainable measurements by individuals and organizations taking various green actions. This data can deliver a concrete impact and is useful in marketing your green efforts.

Living green

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-Oshkosh has, in many respects, laid the groundwork for the New North and for higher education across the country for its sustainable initiatives.

After establishing a new environmental studies major in 2002, the UW-Oshkosh became the first state university to join the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership by agreeing to purchase at least 3 percent of its energy from renewable sources, making it the largest purchaser of green energy in Wisconsin. In 2009, nearly 21 percent of the campus electricity is provided through renewable resource generation, said Tom Sonnleitner, vice chancellor of administrative services at UW-Oshkosh.

UW-Oshkosh has undertaken considerable financial expense, work from members of its campus community, and other resources to head down this green path, but it’s all been worthwhile.

“The real reason behind this is to expose every student, faculty and staff member to environmental issues,” Sonnleitner said. “Particularly as these students leave the university and take these ideas into their careers.”

Sonnleitner said faculty is working to put together a curriculum for every major of study that would expose each student to some aspect of sustainability. Such a goal is increasingly easier to implement as the campus evolves into a working laboratory of green technological features.

A hefty slate of new construction projects on the campus leading up to 2012 include a wood gasification plant to heat its boilers, an anaerobic digester to generate additional electricity, geothermal heating and cooling technology for the retrofit of its Elmwood Commons, and the eventual addition of wind turbines for further electrical generation.

The projects follow up on a plan proposed by Gov. Jim Doyle in 2006 for UW-Oshkosh and three other UW campuses to be energy independent by 2012. These are substantial additions to the campus.

The anaerobic digester, which the campus is partially financing with a $230,000 grant from Focus on Energy, will help decrease UW-Oshkosh’s current carbon footprint by 5 percent, Sonnleitner reported. While currently boasting a 59,000-ton carbon footprint – that is, the total set of greenhouse gas emissions caused by an individual, organization, event or product – each percentage point the campus can shave is a substantial contribution toward sustainability. The proposed wood gasification plan would reduce the campus carbon footprint by an additional 15 percent.

“We continue to ask the question ‘How do we pick away at that so that we’re carbon neutral?’” Sonnleitner said.    

  “(All of these efforts are) starting to give us a reputation. It’s starting to brand us. We’d like to be known as the sustainable-focused university.”