Clean Companies Save Money

Workshop to Explain How Firms Can Become Eco-Superstars

by Robert Schwab
Originally printed in the Denver Post, Saturday, January 18, 1997

Take a tour of Majestic Metals with Denton Johnson and you notice that the floor is clean, the air is clean, and even when you walk by work bays where employees spray paint, you barely smell the paint.

The place is well lit, no slivers of scrap metal dust the machines or their operators, and in one room of the plant, wide, lunky vacuum tubes pull metal dust out of the air and away from the eyes and nostrils of workers as they grind and manipulate more metal.

Even most of the shipping pallets are plastic rather than the oil-stained, wooden ones you see in many factories around town.

The cleanliness is no coincidence. Majestic Metals, a precision sheetmetal manufacturer in north Denver, enjoys a reputation among many national energy and environmental officials as an environmental superstar.

Those officials want you to know that your business could become one, too.

The Federal Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Small Business Administration, as well as other sponsors, are hosting a day-long workshop on Thursday on how to make your plant as clean and efficient as Majestic Metals, and where to get the money to do it.

"This is a real unusual event for us," said Jerry Kotas, co-director of the Energy Department's national Climate Wise program. "We're trying to serve as brokers, partnering manufacturing companies with the financial community."

Kotas, naturally a booster of his own program, offers some attention-grabbing numbers to make the point that energy efficiency and pollution prevention can save you money.

Among the 255 companies who are enrolled nationally in the 2-year-old Climate Wise program, DOE officials are projecting shared savings of $30 million a year for doing such things as changing out motors and light bulbs to save energy, recycling waste and changing out supplies to less polluting materials.

Johnson, for instance, tells of his company's move to change from solvent-borne paints to water-borne paints, which required a campaign by Majestic to convince its own customers that it could maintain the quality of its work even while using the less polluting raw material.

The changeover reduced the amount of solvents Majestic sent to a hazardous waste dump each year from 25 barrels to one or two, Johnson said.

And emissions from use of the paints and other raw materials were reduced so radically that Majestic was named a 1994 "Partner of the Year" by Clean Air Colorado, the state campaign to clean up Denver and Colorado skies.

Carl Roberts, who founded Majestic in 1979, is a little leery of specifics when it comes to dollars and cents, but he said the savings his company has toted up since undertaking Majestic's effort to lead the pack in pollution prevention and energy efficiency register in at least six digits.

Statistics from the DOE show that just one change made by Majestic, to high-volume, low-pressure paint guns, at a cost of just $3,002 could net the company $140,900 in savings over eight years.

In an industry where Roberts competes locally with about 35 firms for a piece of what he estimates is a $100 million to $200 million pie, Roberts said measures like waste minimization and energy efficiency just make sense.

Kotas, whose organizers have recruited about 100 companies for the seminar Thursday — there's room left for about 50 more — said many business are "simply unaware" of the help and money available to companies that can save them those kinds of dollars.

Government laboratories like Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, for example, can offer up to 40 hours of free assistance to a company like Majestic if it runs into a problem, Kotas said.

He said companies who attend the $45 workshop will walk away with a computer software program that will analyze costs and savings of various equipment conversions. Bankers and other financiers will be available to cut deals to come up with the money to make them.

Majestic Metals
Address: 1400 E. 66^th Ave., Denver
Phone: 288-6855
Industry: precision sheetmetal manufacturing
Employees: 100
Revenues: undisclosed

Jeanne Roberts, Carl's wife and a Majestic employee, says her family — their sons and daughters are all involved in operating the company — is trying to reduce pollution and save energy because it will leave something behind for future generations.

"We've got grandchildren, and other people have grandchildren," she said.

"It's not just the savings; even if you can do it at an equal cost, isn't it wise?

Robert Schwab writes about small business, minority business and women in business for The Denver Post. His column appears Saturdays. He can be reached at (303) 820-1410, or send e-mail to business@denverpost.com and put "Schwab" in the subject field.