But as president of InPro Corporation, Ziegler supports the green and the gold in a very different way.

The green represents the company’s sustainability efforts while the gold is the money these measures saved and the profits its green products have generated.

The Muskego manufacturer of handrails, wall guards and other architectural products for hospitals, nursing homes, schools and hotels across the globe, invested $43,800 to green operations in early 2010 and saved $190,284 by year’s end. And going green will continue to save green in 2011, with Ziegler predicting a savings of $216,284.

Not a bad return on investment (ROI), says Ziegler, “We really scored with this.”

Green before it was cool
Just as Barbara Mandrell once crooned that she was “Country when country wasn’t cool,” Ziegler can say the same about sustainability. InPro began reducing its energy footprint by greening its product line long before it became in vogue to do so — and years before the company officially launched initiatives to green its New Berlin and Muskego operations.

“We were actually the first company in our industry to develop an alternative to PVC (polyvinyl chloride),” he says. The company launched its EnviroGT™ line in 2001. These products use plastics with improved environmental characteristics, including PETG, a polyester-based polymer.

“The problem with PETG a decade ago, however, was that it was pretty brittle and hard to work with,” Ziegler says. The company kept looking for a better alternative and in 2010 perfected its BioPolyPETG+™ material, containing a bio-based plastic made from corn and recycled material that offers the same characteristics as PVC.

The BioPolyPETG+ line met with plenty of enthusiasm among InPro customers, which number in the hundreds of thousands. Today, 20 percent of all quotes to new customers are for the new biopolymer blend; in some parts of the country that number is as high as 80 percent. “No product we have ever launched has had the sales that this one has had,” Ziegler says.

InPro will continue to develop greener alternatives. Ziegler says they rely on the StageGate product development process, which defines the different stages a product must go through before it comes to market. A critical part of InPro’s development process is asking how a product can be made greener.

“We ask that of every product we sell,” Ziegler says. “That is different than in the past.”

Going for the gold
As InPro greened its products, Ziegler knew the day would come when customers began asking about the company’s sustainability practices. In 2009, Ziegler attended a Smart Business Forum Inc. conference and realized the time was now to incorporate sustainability into InPro’s daily operations.

“They recognized they were already looking at sustainability on the product side, but needed to do more,” says Greg Bell, executive director of the Smart Business Forum, a Waukesha based organization formed to aid small- to mid-sized businesses with sustainability.
Ziegler explains, “If you add green products to make a profit, but don’t do anything green as a company, then you’re not as green as you could be.”

He began by addressing the management team at InPro’s annual business-planning session. Here, improving sustainability emerged as a leading objective for 2010.

Ziegler then created a sustainable business practices team charged with implementing sustainable initiatives, and broke the 22-member team into five actionable groups: water reduction, landscaping, energy consumption, recycling and waste reduction.

“InPro charged committee members with looking at sustainability in each area from both a business and operational standpoint,” says Bell.

These individuals, representing a wide cross-section of functions from human resources to sales to manufacturing, reviewed tactics recommended by the Smart Business Forum’s Sustainable Enterprise Action Tool (SEAT). This online tool invites business practitioners to consider 180 sustainable actions.

The committee ultimately decided to pursue approximately 80 tactics. “They got real aggressive about what they wanted to do as a company, and implemented quite a few things,” Bell says.

Low-hanging fruit
Early on, We Energies audited the firm’s energy use. Here, Ziegler says he was pleasantly surprised to learn that InPro facility manager, Jeff Zandi, had already implemented many strategies that improved energy efficiency.

Ziegler explains that in manufacturing plants this size (the company owns a total of 400,000 square feet of manufacturing space), auditors typically find energy being wasted in a number of ways. Air compressors, for instance, often lose energy through outdated motors, poorly maintained filters and air leaks throughout the system. We Energies found InPro’s compressors already equipped with energy efficient motors and airlines regularly repaired. Zandi also had already installed energy-efficient T8 fluorescent lights in its manufacturing facilities.

But even with a facility manager who was on top of the energy savings game, auditors uncovered some low-hanging sustainability fruit.

They honed in on an energy-intensive machine wasting tons of energy. The chipper, used to grind up scraps produced in the manufacturing process, ran 24 hours a day. But operating that machine day and night added up to $65,000 to $80,000 a year.

InPro now operates its chipper from 9:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., when electricity is the cheapest, and tasks a single employee with running scrap through it. The measure saved the company $65,000 in the first year.

“It just shows that even a company like ours, that has already done a lot, can find a gold nugget,” he says. “And it didn’t cost us anything, all we had to change was when we operated the machine.”

There were actually several measures that only required a process change, not a capital outlay. For instance, marketing managers culled the company’s catalog mailing list for duplicate mailings and saved $42,000.

“Our mailing list had gotten away from us,” Ziegler says. “We were able to significantly reduce the number of catalogs being sent out, thus reducing printing and mailing costs.”

Using Skype for meetings and interviews saved an estimated $15,000; setting copiers to default to double-sided printing reduced paper usage by 25 percent and eliminated $5,000 in paper and toner expenses; and switching to electronic paychecks and auto-deposits cut payroll costs by $10,000. And when it was found they used 188,000 Styrofoam cups annually, InPro agreed to continue furnishing free coffee and tea, but asked employees to supply their own cups.

“InPro’s success highlights that it doesn’t have to be expensive to go green,” adds Bell. “Shutting off the chipper was a huge diamond in the rough that nobody had really considered,” he says. “Will it always be this dramatic? No. But will there always be something you can do? Yes. You can become more sustainable without making a huge investment.”

Investing in the future
Not every change InPro made was free or saved money, however. The company’s switch to green floor wax, non-toxic stripper, certified green cleaners and move to dry carpet cleaning proved cost neutral.

And replacing the company’s beautifully manicured lawns with Wisconsin natural prairie grass and wildflowers cost $17,000. However, this project is expected to save the company $19,000 the first year and $36,000 a year by Year Two. And because a prairie restoration project takes three years to complete, Ziegler expects to save more down the line. “When all is said and done, we should save approximately $45,000 a year on mowing, fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation,” he says. “Plus, the city of Muskego is thrilled that we are no longer dumping runoff fertilizers and pesticides into the wetlands.”

An $800 investment in timers on baseboard heaters ensures the heat automatically turns down to 62 degrees at night. Spending $13,000 to replace 23 high-flow toilets, which use 1.6 gallons of water per flush (gpf) instead of 3.5 gpf, saves 900,000 gallons of water a year. A high-ticket item that will likely have some ROI in the future — though not in the very near term — is a $13,000 high-speed garage door in the plant’s extrusion area.

This area is air-conditioned and every time a worker drove a forklift outside to retrieve supplies, the garage door remained open. The new door opens and quickly shuts.

“It’s now open 20 seconds instead of 20 minutes,” says Ziegler. “I can’t tell you how long it’s going to take to recoup what we paid for the door, but I know it was the right thing to do.”

Some sustainability efforts reap environmental benefits but little more, Ziegler admits. “If you’re only considering the things that will generate a profit or save money, then you’re not really green — you’re kind of a green washer,” he says. “But if you’re willing to spend money to help save the environment, realizing your return may be way out in the future or may never come, then you can call yourself green.”  CRW

Sustainability success
It ain’t easy being green. But it can be if the following is in place when a company begins a sustainability program.

A compelling reason to go green. “We would all like to do the right thing and be more sustainable, but there will be a higher degree of motivation to execute sustainability measures if there is a compelling business reason for doing so,” says Greg Bell, executive director of the Smart Business Forum. The reasons to go green can be many: regulatory issues, litigation risks, supply chain concerns, and more.

Commitment from the top. “It can’t be a casual commitment, where a manager puts its execution in the hands of junior employees,” Bell says. “An engaged upper-level executive can take sustainability initiatives a long way.”

Develop a green team. “Sustainability cannot be the responsibility of just one individual,” adds Bell. The best green teams represent a variety of business functions.

Engage a consultant or other resource to help. “That’s where the Smart Business Forum comes in,” Bell says. The Smart Business Forum at www.smartbizforum.com offers a variety of tools designed to help companies implement sustainability tactics and track their progress.

Continuously revisit the sustainability plan. “You can’t just set up a plan and have it sit on a shelf,” says Phil Ziegler, president of InPro Corporation. “You have to report on it monthly and follow the progress being made.”

By Ronnie Garrett

Ronnie Garrett is the Editor of Corporate Report Wisconsin.