Profit & planet:
Buffalo finds eco-friendly ways of doing business
By Lauren Newkirk Maynard
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Eric Fox, owner of Mr. Fox Tire, plans to install a green roof.
Photo by kc kratt. |
According to Buffalo First’s founder Amy Kedron, these goals are not mutually exclusive. Running an environmentally aware business is getting easier and, in many cases, cheaper, thanks in part to growing consumer requests for less wasteful manufacturing and transportation methods.
“The customer is demanding it, so we go where they tell us,” says Bob Syracuse, owner of the local Pizza Plant restaurants, Buffalo First board member, and president of the Western New York chapter of the New York Restaurant Association. His restaurants recycle and he tries whenever possible to purchase locally made cleaning supplies.
Guercio’s, an independently owned Italian grocer on Grant Street that works with some area farmers, functions as a lower-impact alternative to such national wholesalers as Sysco, one of the country’s largest food distributors and a major consumer of fossil fuels. Guercio’s profits from supplying many Buffalo restaurants like Betty’s and Amaryllis, who in turn benefit from customers demanding fresh, locally sourced ingredients on their dinner menus.
Rising energy costs are also driving businesses to adopt greener ways of doing business. The National Small Business Association surveyed eighty small businesses and found that seventy-three percent plan on buying energy-saving products and services if energy prices continue to increase. The NSBA recommends that its 150,000 members try the cost- and energy-saving tips provided by the national Energy Star Small Business Program (www.energystar.gov). Many NSBA members are taking the Energy Star Challenge to reduce their energy consumption by ten percent or more.
Even this minimal reduction may seem daunting at first for a struggling small-business owner, but it can be possible by phasing efficiencies into the business plan gradually. For example, Caz Coffee Café and Tru Teas are both modest in size and budget, but they faithfully compost their kitchen scraps. Planet Love, a two-person printing shop, makes all of its T-shirts with nontoxic, water-based inks and offers an organic, unbleached line; its directory is printed on one-hundred-percent recycled paper.
Others are more ambitious. The Lexington Co-op, a local environmental leader, uses extensive recycling and composting programs to control waste. Its new Elmwood Avenue building won a 2006 Erie County Executive Energy Achievement Award for its construction methods, which the Co-op says have decreased its electrical usage per square foot by one third.
Buffalo Bean and Leaf, a coffee shop on Hertel Avenue, uses cups and spoons made of compostable corn. In fact, owner Stephanie Limoncelli tries to make all of her kitchen supply purchases biodegradable. One payback for the higher costs is that she is using her passion for the planet as a selling point, marketing her store as an “earth-friendly source” for Fair Trade and organic teas and coffees. “I’ve always wanted to be able to run my business so that it contributes more good things to the world than bad,” she says.
This spring, Limoncelli has been slowly transitioning the store to a coffee/tea/juice bar that offers studio space for yoga and music lessons. She is looking into using PVC-free rubber yoga mats and purchasing green power “off the grid.”
At Mr. Fox Tire, an auto body shop on William Street that sells used and new tires and custom wheels, owner Eric Fox plans to install one of the region’s first green roofs. The 900-square-foot warehouse roof was reinforced last summer, and this year will receive an insulating carpet of hardy, low-maintenance vegetation with the help of a local landscape architecture firm, Kevin Connors and Associates.
Fox is okay with the fact that the roof’s initial investment will cost around $30,000—far outstripping any real energy savings in the near future. “In the long run, the extra cost will be worth it if it means we can show others how to do this, too,” he says. And, once the “living” roof takes root, it could make a statement that will undoubtedly garner more attention for his brand.
The shop also burns about seventy-five percent of the waste oil from oil changes to heat the building, and Fox is a stickler for using energy-efficient light bulbs and recycling trash. It’s not just about good business, he says, but a way of looking at life. “I was one of the first to drive a hybrid car, and now I want to become a hybrid person.”
Lauren Newkirk Maynard is a Buffalo-based freelance writer who covers food and sustainability issues. More earth-friendly businesses can be found at www.buffalofirst.org.
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