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Small Business Human Resources Workforce Development Your Questions Answered Success Stories

September 2007 — Vol. 85, No. 7

Green your own operations

 

You already try to operate efficiently to keep costs down and productivity up. The drive to become green adds a new impetus to that quest. Here are some things you might consider doing.

Pursue energy efficiency: “In most companies, the low-hanging fruit is energy use. Most businesses are pretty energy inefficient,” Joel Makower said at a CBIA conference. “The types of light bulbs and motors that run the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, the efficiency of appliances and the building itself, the windows — all these kinds of things are often great ways for companies to make a small investment and get a payback pretty quickly.”

Michael Paine, president of Paine’s Inc., a recycling and waste-handling facility in East Granby, says, “Four years ago we changed all the lights in our building. It cost us a little bit more to install energy-efficient lights, but we’ve saved on our energy bills.”

“Energy conservation is a wonderful thing,” states Tom Santa, CEO of Santa Energy in Bridgeport. “We’re relamping with energy-efficient lighting. We installed an HVA-control system [that can] reduce the run time. We’re buying vehicles that get better fuel mileage. And I bought a hybrid car for myself.”

Contact your utility company for energy-efficiency ideas and to see if you qualify for any of the state’s energy-efficiency incentives.

Use clean and renewable energy: Do this directly, for instance, with a solar energy system, or indirectly through CT Clean Energy Options, a state-approved program that allows customers of Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating to support clean energy from renewable sources such as wind, water and landfill gas.

The tea company R.C. Bigelow Inc. chose solar power. The company recently installed the state’s second-largest solar array system (194 kilowatts) on the roof of its Fairfield facility. “It will produce 10% to 20% of our electrical demand,” says Dean Hearst, vice president of manufacturing.

“Our peak demand is in the summer, for air conditioning, and the peak benefit from solar is in the summer,” he says. “So solar fits our [energy] profile very well.”

The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund (CCEF) provided incentives for installing the system, and “the state has tax benefits as well,” Hearst says. “We’re looking at a four-year payback.”

To qualify for CCEF incentives, he says, “we have to promote solar energy.” To do that, Bigelow’s Web site will show people how the solar array is performing. “It is weather dependent,” Hearst notes.

Curtis Packaging, on the other hand, chose the CT Clean Energy Options route. The company has a three-year contract to buy clean energy (mostly wind plus some small hydro) equal to 100% of the company’s energy use.

Benefit from biodiesel: Made from natural oils such as soybean oil, biodiesel has advantages over low-sulfur diesel. (Federal rules now ban the use of high-sulfur diesel.)

Sulfur is a lubricant, points out Michael Paine. Low-sulfur diesel doesn’t have much lubricating ability, whereas biodiesel does, he says. That’s one reason Paine’s Inc. now uses biodiesel. It also burns cleaner and quieter, and comes from renewable, domestic sources, he says. And he finds that biodiesel “is comparable in cost to low-sulfur diesel.” Santa Energy has been selling biodiesel for about five years, says Tom Santa. “We also sell biofuel for heating. There has been a growing demand for biofuel,” he notes.

Before buying biodiesel, he advises, “Make certain you’re buying a product with good specifications. Unlike petroleum products, which are refined in very large quantities, a lot of biofuel today is like home brewing, like brew pubs: It’s made in small batches. Make sure you buy from a good, reputable company that stands behind its products.”

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle: Besides helping its customers go green, Eastern Bag & Paper Co. practices what it preaches. “We ourselves have a recycling program for various types of paper and pallet wrap. We have reduced-use paper dispensers in our facility, water-saving faucets and approved soaps,” says Marketing
Manager Janet Hinterneder.

Paine’s Inc. reuses waste oil from its 40 vehicles in its furnaces. “To do this, you need a waste oil furnace,” says Paine. “We’ve had ours about seven or eight years. We were at the end of the life cycle on our existing heaters. The amount I was spending on propane equaled the payments for the new furnaces,” which he says have now paid for themselves. “We buy a small amount of oil to supplement the waste oil generated by our trucks.”

Even if you have fewer vehicles than Paine’s, it could be worthwhile to get a waste oil furnace, Paine says. “You can buy waste oil. It’s cheaper than virgin oil,” he points out.

But, he says, “We would do this even if it cost us a little more money, because I have to do something with that waste oil. Now, I get to use the oil twice — in my trucks and to heat my building.”

 

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