Gone Green

In the summer of 2006, Gem Supply Co., an Orlando, Fla.-based jan/san distributor, began living green before preaching green.

Spawned by upper management, the company’s new sustainable outlook in each of its four Florida facilities was backed by the philosophy of not only selling green products to customers, but to also maintain a new mission towards sustainability in their own facilities and operations.

That’s because the company didn’t want to make it appear as if they were only playing lip service to what has become the marketing twist of the decade for jan/san distributors, says Dave Collins, Gem Supply’s vice president of marketing and training.

“Telling somebody else why they should be green is like saying you should go to church but I don’t need to, you should stop drinking but I don’t need to, or you should stop smoking but I don’t need to. That’s the wrong way to do business,” he says.

For years, jan/san distributors have been selling, promoting and training end users on the benefits of going green. However, the credibility that distributors may have built up over those years with customers could take a major hit because they themselves have failed to implement eco-friendly practices in their own operations.

“If we’re going to be out there selling and promoting green products and helping our customers go green, we’ve got to do them ourselves first,” says Shelley Riley, president and owner of Maintenance Mart, a Phoenix, Ariz.-based jan/san distributor. “We’ve got to buy into it, too.”

What is happening from a competitive standpoint in today’s jan/san distribution sector is that it is becoming essential for distributors if they desire to be on the leading edge to not only “talk the green talk,” but also “walk the green walk.”

Painting Distribution Green

Going green was once thought to be a short-lived fad. Some distributors in certain parts of the country still think it will die off, but as concern over environmental issues continues to run high throughout the United States, going green over the last five years has blossomed into a powerful trend that is changing the way business is done.

More than anything else, the true benefit to going green is the ability for distributors to speak to customers with some credibility. In fact, more customers are approaching distributors and asking what they themselves are doing to be green when trying to sell green cleaning programs.

Bill McGarvey, training manager for Philip Rosenau Co., Warminster, Pa., says his company has been approached by several customers over the last 18 months about what his company is doing internally to be green. One recent instance pushed the company to start documenting their own path to going green.

“We had one fairly large customer who was going through a big environmental push internally and the vice president turns to our salesperson and said, ‘What are you guys doing?’ And our salesperson, not knowing what to say just sat there,” says McGarvey. “So that was the beginning for us to start putting what we’re doing down on paper because we do have a story to tell.”

Distributors can also use their own sustainable practices to their advantage in their selling approach. Some distributors have gone as far as having employees on staff become Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professionals (LEED-AP). The LEED Professional Accreditation program, managed by the Green Building Certification Institute, distinguishes building professionals with the knowledge and skills to successfully steward the LEED certification process. Several distributors have employees who are LEED-AP certified and can in turn use that to help customers towards greening their own facilities.

Sadly, there are still distributors out there who are only selling green vs. using green. According to a recent survey conducted by Sanitary Maintenance of nearly 450 top executives of jan/san distribution companies throughout the United States, 89 percent of respondents say they currently sell green cleaning products. That number dips 17 percent when asked if they themselves are using green cleaning products in their own facilities.

Stephen Ashkin, president of The Ashkin Group LLC, Bloomington, Ind., says that distributors should step back and put themselves in the customer’s chair.

“On their side of the desk, they’re hearing from numerous janitorial salespeople that they can meet LEED requirements and they have green certified products and they’re experts on green,” he says. “But very few distributors can say let me point you to some things that actually demonstrate our real commitment to the issue and our knowledge.”

Maintenance Mart is one example of a distributor able to sell green programs backed with the credibility of their own sustainable practices.

“[Customers] come back to me with admiration: ‘Wow! That’s awesome. We’re happy we’re doing business with you, we’re happy that you care,’” says Riley.

Going green can also go along way in saving on operational costs. Looking for ways to conserve resources like fuel, energy and water has a direct bottom line benefit for distributors.

“When a distributor figures out how to manage their warehouse better so that they’re using less natural gas in their forklifts to load their trucks, not only is it better for the environment and reduces their carbon footprint, but it saves them money,” says Ashkin.

Distributors are now linking business value to green thinking in several ways. And by using a traditional green approach — recycling — they’re cutting operational costs and are able to drive new revenues.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

According to SM’s survey, 64 percent of jan/san distributors currently have recycling programs in their operations. However, many distributors have gone beyond the traditional recycling of plastic bottles, aluminum cans, paper and cardboard. As of late, distributors are making cognizant decisions to recycle everyday operational equipment as well. And they’re finding that it pays to recycle — literally.

One popular item distributors are saving money on is by reusing and recycling serviceable pallets. Philip Rosenau Co., goes to the extent of paying its delivery truck drivers $2 for each pallet they bring back from a customer’s warehouse.

“It encourages them to bring the pallets back, gets them out of our customers’ locations and it keeps them from going into a landfill,” says McGarvey.

Distributors are also finding recycling scraps from used cleaning equipment to be a rewarding process as well.

“In the past an autoscrubber would die and we would take that autoscrubber and just throw it in the junk pile,” says Gem Supply’s Collins. “Now we disassemble it. The plastics go to recycling. We take the steel structure and deal with that. We take the motors out that work, shine them up and put them on the shelf and sell them as used motors. Where before some of that stuff didn’t happen.”

Distributors also have found it to be cost-efficient to reduce their paper use in their offices.

Knoxville, Tenn.-based Kelsan Inc., has made a strong effort to use its Intranet site to cut back on the company’s sales staff’s paper usage, says Teresa Farmer, green program specialist. Instead of printing daily or monthly sales reports for its 40-plus salespeople, the salespeople are asked to access their reports via the company’s Intranet site or by e-mail. If employees do print documents, Kelsan has mandated that they print on both sides of a sheet of paper.

Gem Supply also has made an effort to reduce paper waste. One of the ways the company has done so is by eliminating printed literature from manufacturers, which Collins says amounts to 10 filing cabinets worth.

“We talked to every manufacturer and said we want every piece of literature that they send us in the form of PDFs,” Collins says. “We’re making a PDF library to eliminate those 10 filing cabinets.”

So, instead of giving customers printed product literature, Gem Supply’s salespeople send the information in a PDF format to customers via e-mail. The company has also provided its salespeople with removable disk drives that allow them to store and download literature to a customer’s hard drive to also help them cut back on their use of paper.

Another goal for distributors in today’s environmental-conscious jan/san industry is not to just roll out environmentally friendly products and so forth, but also to devise an eco-friendly process for getting those products to customers as well.

Transportation

The high price of gasoline has made distributors look for ways to drive the cost down on deliveries. At the same time, however, distributors have recognized that sustainable methods are advantageous in decreasing and conserving fuel with their transportation fleets.

At Philip Rosenau Co., the organization has found savings by implementing a routing software package for its trucking fleet.

“The basis is the same as UPS (United Parcel Service) uses,” says McGarvey. “The idea is to try to eliminate left-hand turns. Because sitting there waiting to make left-hand turns, you’re burning fuel. It helps us be more efficient in the fuel we’re burning.”

For a distributor that has a large fleet of trucks, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one’s fuel consumption can translate into huge savings overall.

Waxie Sanitary Supply, San Diego, has also followed UPS’ lead and worked with the nationwide parcel service in helping improve its delivery fleet’s routing system.

“What that does is for each night, we route the trucks in order to send out full trucks,” says Keith Schneringer, the company’s marketing manager. “We’ve had instances in the past where we were able to keep a truck back. So instead of sending out five trucks that are 75 percent full, we’ll send out four trucks that are 100 percent full.”

Those savings in turn are passed down to customers and helps cut down on delivery surcharges as well.

With gas prices reaching $4 a gallon even more distributors are exploring green transportation and are making the switch to hybrid trucks and cars to offset the high price of gasoline.

The Green Facility

Distributors are finding value in greening their facilities, too. In fact, 67 percent of distributors who took part in SM’s survey say they have made the switch to fluorescent lighting in their buildings, while 36 percent cite conserving water and energy as their main focus in their building.

Kelsan Inc., recently conducted an audit in its warehouse and was told that if the company upgraded its lighting to compact fluorescents that it would cut its utility bill by anywhere from 35 to 50 percent each month.

Although there’s a high upfront cost to changing out the lighting in its warehouse, Kelsan is sold on long-term savings, says Farmer.

The upfront costs of upgrading facilities has largely turned distributors away from greening their facilities, let alone building new greener, LEED-certified facilities.

But for some jan/san distributors, building green facilities from the ground up is in the works. Waxie Sanitary Supply is in the process of building two new inventory centers — one in Utah and one in Arizona.

“We’re working with an architect and the builders are incorporating LEED into that process,” Schneringer says. “We’re still in the planning stages but at this point, we’re planning on making both of those LEED certified for new construction.”

The company has purchased land for the two new sites but both facilities are still in the design phase. However, the company’s approach is to take advantage of the Earth’s resources.

“We’re definitely looking to take advantage of the tremendous amount of sun in Arizona so we’re making sure that we are making the building as comfortable as possible, but using the least amount of energy,” says Schneringer.

Throughout the process, Waxie plans to identify the best areas and feasibility of certain processes to help justify the high price tags.

“What that comes down to is the commitment to the idea of it and it comes down to a long range perspective,” says Schneringer. “Because without a doubt, when you’re looking at green building strategies in the construction process, you’re going to have a higher first cost in many instances, and some instances you’re not. And we’re trying to find the areas that are low or no cost differential. But some of those things that do cost more also have a lower cost of ownership and since we build and own our own buildings, we have a long range view of those strategies, so it’s really more of a function of return on investment. Because that’s what it is, an investment, in the building and the people that will be working in the building.”

Getting Started

There is real value for distributors to put an environmental lens on their businesses. Distributors have to start thinking of green business not as a separate, nice-to-do thing, but as a core part of their business and strategy. So, distributors should treat it like an opportunity.

The first step from a distributor’s perspective is to figure out how important green is for their company’s future strategy.

“There are many companies whose goal is to be operationally excellent and to be a low cost provider to their customers. And those companies may choose that green may not be that important to them,” says Ashkin. “Not everyone is going to do green. Really, some just look for the least expensive way to sell products. And that’s OK. There are customers who only want that. So part of it is for the distributor to understand strategically where green fits into their future plans. And once they decide that they have to begin by assessing where they really are.”

For distributors who have yet to implement sustainable practices in their facilities, it’s never too late to get started. In fact, even the companies who are promoting themselves as being on the cutting edge, they’re just getting started.

“We all have so much to learn. And while from a sales and marketing perspective, we all want to say we’re the leader and we’re the best, but even for distributors who are yet to get started, they should not be dissuaded, by thinking it’s too late,” says Ashkin. “They really need to simply understand that even the guys who promote themselves as being way out ahead, have really just begun the journey, too.”

Of course, every day that distributors delay going green, they are getting further and further behind. At the same time however, there’s plenty of work to do and plenty of opportunity for the newcomers.

“Why not cherry-pick it,” says McGarvey. “If they can’t go the whole gamut then cherry-pick it to improve your footprint. Everyone should take a look at what they’re doing. Take 10 minutes, forget about the phone ringing and taking orders and look at their operation. There’s got to be something that they can do. And some of them when they do that, they may realize, hey we are doing something.”