Waste Reduction Success Stories - Small Businesses

More and more businesses are implementing cost saving, environmentally friendly recycling, composting and waste reduction programs. Here are a few small businesses in Cuyahoga County and around the country, who are leading the way.

Lube Stop
Company Car and Limousine

Lube Stop changes to become environmental stewards

Lube Stop, with 37 locations in the Cleveland and Akron-Canton areas, is Ohio's largest independently owned quick oil change company and has recently earned awards for its environmental stewardship. Every year this company recycles more than 400,000 gallons of motor oil, more than 30,000 gallons of antifreeze, and voluntarily recycles hundreds of thousands of oil filters. Lube Stop sells ‘green’ oil changes, using re-refined oil. Now about 50% of customers buy the EcoGuard® oil change service.

To minimize waste to landfills during the move of its headquarters, Lube Stop recycled 43 pallets of paper and more than 1,000 banker boxes. In total, more than 2.5 million sheets of paper were recycled. In addition, approximately 50 CPUs and 30 CRT monitors were recycled along with a dozen keyboards, mice, and miscellaneous IT items. Thousands of pounds of steel, in the form of obsolete office equipment, cubicles, shelving, and old store machines, were also recycled. Nearly four truck loads of scrap steel went to recycling instead of landfills.

The carpeting at the new headquarters is from InterfaceFLOR, a leader in sustainable business practices. Interface is committed to being carbon neutral and having zero waste by 2020. Since 1995, Interface has diverted 94 million pounds of material from landfills, resulting in $107 million in savings and reducing cost of goods by 48%.

The corporate offices also now include a disposal, dish washer, and refrigerator installed in the kitchen to make the office more comfortable, but also to further their sustainability efforts. The office no longer uses styrofoam, paper plates, or plastic utensils. Disposables have been replaced with glasses, plates, and flatware. This will make the office feel a little more like home and significantly reduce the amount of waste throw away. As Bill McDonough says, “…away has gone away.”

To further reduce their waste stream, Lube Stop is using Waste Management’s Single Stream recycling program, which makes it easier to recycle and improves recovery rates and efficiency. The 8 million tons of recyclable materials recovered annually by Waste Management in the U.S. saves enough energy to power 833,000 homes. Specific recycling guidelines are posted in kitchen and copier areas to show staff how to make the program successful. Lube Stop extended this model to the field in May 2010 and is now recycling cardboard, plastic and glass bottles, and aluminum cans at all 37 stores under an agreement with Republic Waste Services. This program will reduce the company’s waste stream by at least 50%.

In December 2008, Lube Stop won the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Environmental Stewardship.. Coordinated by the Ohio EPA, the award acknowledges Ohio businesses demonstrating a commitment to go beyond compliance, maintain aggressive environmental performance goals, and a process for communicating with the local community about program activities and progress toward performance goals. “These companies set an example of protecting Ohio’s natural resources and demonstrate new innovative approaches that have improved business and quality of life. I commend their efforts,” said Governor Strickland.

Lube Stop is one of the first companies in the oil change industry to implement a formal sustainability program aimed at reducing the company’s ecological impact. The company is working with the Institute for Sustainable Development and hopes to receive Green Plus Certification by Q3 2010. For more information, visit http://www.lubestop.com/sustainability.asp.

Company Car and Limousine drives for change

Stephen Qua, president of Company Car and Limousine in Cleveland, has greened everything he can in his company. “We have to find green things that we can do and then participate in emerging technologies as they come on board.”

Qua started by placing cards in the back of his limos asking people to leave their plastic water bottles behind for recycling. In the first two days of the program, he filled a 55-gallon drum with bottles that would have previously gone into a landfill.

From there, he took the program to his office, setting the thermostat at 72 instead of 67 in the summer, recycling, installing fluorescent lights and e-mailing confirmations rather than faxing them.

On the road, he implemented a no-idle policy, insisting the chauffeurs shut down the car while waiting for customers and promoting 'right sizing vehicles,' so he sends an eight-passenger van to pick up six people, instead of two sedans.

But two initiatives have jump-started his company on a road few have taken so far. The first is converting a town car to a gas-propane hybrid. “The vehicle will burn on American-made propane, which burns almost carbon-free, instead of imported gasoline,” he explains.

He plans to run the car about 25,000 miles before deciding if he should change other cars over.

Finally, he partnered with an Indiana dairy farm that has developed energy from burning cow manure that turns a turbine to create power. Participating in a voluntary carbon-off-setting program is viewed as a costly intangible for many businesses.

“Until one of the automobile manufacturers builds a zero-carbon-emitting machine, we have to do something,” Qua says. “If every American said, ‘I’m buying my power in a green fashion,’ it would become a nonintangible real fast, because we’d see coal production go down. I want to be the economic stimulus.”

There are over 14,000 limousine companies operating over 130,000 vehicles across North America. Company Car and Limousine is taking a leading role in doing its part – and spreading the word.

(Excerpts from Inside Business, August, 2008)