When it comes to going green, the perception of becoming a tree-hugger has to be overcome. Turning a profit remains the bottom line for businesses.
One formerly skeptical business owner used information from the Hudson Valley Technology Development Center Inc. to tighten operations and brighten the bottom line.
While economic stimulus money is slowly seeping into the economy, Robert Partridge, co-owner and general manager of Lighting and Electronics Inc. in Wappingers Falls,  created his own stimulus fund by revamping operations. He found he could save energy and reduce waste through seminars he attended at Fishkill-based HVTDC.
Now, the development center is following up their Green Leader classes with business leaders with a road show, taking their key points to individual business locations or to groups that request their curriculum.
“This is an expansion of sorts from what we offered at the training session and what can be offered to groups or very easily to individual companies for a fee,” said Phyllis Levine, manager of marketing and administration at the HVTDC.
The original course was fully sold out, so the center developed a training module to spread the knowledge. The idea is to educate participants in the use of green assessments and productivity/environmental principles focused on energy, pollution and waste stream reductions. HVTDC will review approaches that businesses use to help them establish green business practices. Rather than adding expense, she said, these green principles cut costs, increases profits and helps market company services and products. Â
In addition, the course presents a comprehensive review of available resources and outreach programs available to Hudson Valley organizations geared toward going green, including attaining sustainability and reducing use of toxic chemicals, air emissions and other wastes from production.Â
Lighting and Electronics Inc. was looking for advice on green funding sources when Partridge attended the HVTDC courses which ran over five weeks in March and April. Instead, he said, he received a wealth of practical knowledge that has led directly to reduced wastes and better profits. “I found this was one of the most targeted programs I had ever attended for a small manufacturer,” he said.
The company manufactures high-energy theatrical and entertainment lighting, performing the entire process from the aluminum frames to finished fixtures in a 40,000-square-foot facility in Wappingers Falls. The facility provided some fixtures to the 1964 World”™s Fair and has been under the same ownership since 1975.
“There is supposedly a lot of money roaming around out there, through TARP and from the stimulus recovery package, so I was looking at it strictly through the financial lens of wanting someone to point me through the bureaucracy to access those funds,” Partridge said.
On the first day of class, he said, “The first speaker was, forgive me, a tree hugger,” Partridge said, who though he had done “tremendous things,” seemed to have little in common with Partridge”™s business concerns. “I was a little concerned that I signed up for five days of that,” Partridge chuckled.
Instead, the information presented at the course “saved us some hard cash immediately,” he said. “We saw real results is what it came down to, by attending the program and then spending another hour and a half analyzing it in relation to our operations. And since we are a small company, we could put things into service immediately.”
He cited, as one example, applying paint to their products. “They presented a means by which you can assess your operation step by step until you get back to the root of your consumption, the material.”
He said applying the approach to his company allowed the reduction of water use, more efficient application of the paint and, most lucrative of all, a roughly 10 percent reduction in overall energy use. As part of the process reviewing their operations, Partridge said the company revamped its process for baking the paint on the product, so that instead of running ovens at 400 degrees, they operate them at 325 degrees, thus reducing costs but also producing a better finish.      Â
There is value to reassessing one”™s production process, Partridge said, noting that a surprise bonus emerged from the review, discovery his company was paying the heating bill for another tenant. The landlord is now repaying the overcharge. “Sometimes you don”™t see the forest through the trees because you”™ve done it so much,” Partridge said. “So a fresh pair of eyes or opening my eyes through this class was very important.”
“It was very manufacturing oriented,” Partridge said. “It isn”™t that you have to create a green product, but in essence how to produce with less and that is green. It was not one piece here and one there, collectively as an overall process is where it is effective.”
The HVTDC can be reached at 896-6934.
