When I spoke at an industry event earlier this year about our company’s efforts to “go green,” I didn’t focus on the environmental importance of that effort. It’s not that I don’t feel that’s a key aspect; I just feel everyone has to come to their own opinions about how much they need to do to reduce their “footprint” on the earth.
Instead, I focused on why I believe genuinely focusing on the environment has been good for our business. In some cases, it has saved us money. It’s helped us build our company’s culture, making employees feel good about we are doing as an organization, and encouraging their involvement with ideas and improvements. And no doubt about it, it’s been a huge marketing tool.
Here’s a run-down of some of what we mean when we say we’re “Greenin’ at Keenan.”
- We recycle everything feasible, including metal, tires, paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, toner cartridges, oil, antifreeze and solvent waste. We use services provided nationally by Connecticut-based NLR to simplify our shipment and recycling of discarded lights, ballasts, batteries and more.
- We’ve eliminated Styrofoam coffee cups in our customer waiting areas and switched to biodegradable cups.
- This year, we changed out all of our shop lighting to a more efficient style of fluorescent tubes. The costs was about $13,000 per location, but more than half the expense was offset by energy provider incentives and tax credits, bringing the expected return on investment – thanks to lower electrical bills – down to just 13 months.
- Over three years, we converted all of our shops from oil to natural gas, reducing energy costs by 40 percent.
- I recommend hiring an energy consultant to look for other ways to help reduce your energy costs. These consultants are typically paid by the energy providers based on the reductions in energy use they provide. We’ve used three such consultants over the years, each of which found more savings
- We buy in bulk, everything from paper towels and office supplies to gloves and respirators. This offers considerable savings and often reduces the amount of packaging to recycle. We then use a van that visits our locations twice a week, dropping off the supplies needed at each location and picking up all the recycling. This generates less carbon emissions than having larger Office Depot or Staples trucks delivering to each of our shops.
- I’m a skeptic that this will ever be a “paperless” industry, but we’ve gone “electronic” whenever possible and have reduced the amount of our paper files by at least one-half.
- We captured some industry headlines and feature articles within our markets in 2009 after we installed a complete solar power generating system at one of our locations. I’m proud to say that investment paid for itself in just over three years. It provides about 65 percent of the power the shop needs during operating hours. And when the shop is closed, the energy flows the other direction and we’re selling power back to the grid. We’re making somewhere around $30,000 just for the energy we’re selling back.
We market our green efforts to our customers and potential customers because we are proud to do our part. We’re confident that for some of them it’s been a deciding factor choosing an autobody repair facility. It makes them feel that they are doing their part in saving our most precious commodity: the environment.
And it’s helped us build our company culture in which employees look for ways to improve our business and to feel even better about being part of our team. Our green initiatives sets examples for them both at work and home, and sends a message that we must all work together because a green earth is a clean earth.
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