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theatrical weapons: rental and sales
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making a smaller footprint
So, the question is often put to us, why are our boxes so ugly? After all, new cardboard boxes aren't that expensive are they? Well, they do cost something, and anything that we have to buy does add to the final cost that ends up on your invoice, but cost is not the only reason why we re-use our boxes so many times. No, our ugly boxes are a by-product of a program that we have slowly warmed up to over the past decade. The program seemed straightforward - change every aspect of the way we work so as to reduce environmental damage. What at first seemed like a charming but inconsequential experiment has led to some interesting results. Here's what we've done:
reuse
The first thing we did was look at what was going into our trash bin. This was obviously the easiest. Since we are primarily a rental company, most of the cardboard boxes we ship out come back to us. It was a no-brainer to simply reuse those boxes, which we have taken to extreme lengths. Not only do we get 3 to 5 round trips from the original container, but when we can we cut down damaged boxes to make smaller boxes or to reinforce bigger ones. We did need to find some space to store all of these returning boxes, which take up a little more space than brand-new boxes. Then we had to decide on what to do with all of the packing material that comes back inside those boxes. And we get all kinds - plastic, cloth, paper, Styrofoam, cardboard. We now separate it all and bag the useable packing material to use later, especially the Styrofoam. Much of the stuff that we can't use but can be recycled gets sent to recycling, and then we try give the leftovers one last chance at a good use. Cloth, for example, can often be sewn into utility bags or at least cut up as cleaning rags. Industrial scrap is more difficult to deal with, but we have learned to hold onto scraps of metal, plastic, and wood for longer than we used to. This gives us a chance to look through our scraps when we're building or repairing something, instead of immediately using new stock. With small scrap, we can often use it as filler material when making fiberglass or epoxy repairs, both keeping the scrap out of landfill and reducing the amount of the adhesive. We get lots of things through the mail, through deliveries, and through regular purchases that also gets a second life. Plastic bags, rubber bands, reusable envelopes; all get viewed with an eye to possible uses either in our shops or in our office. In our office, every piece of paper that is blank on one side gets reused, and it was shocking to see how many sheets normally get printed on one-side and then go right to trash. We use them now as basic note-taking paper, in-house photocopies, and for faxes. Then we noticed that the press-on shipping label blanks we get from UPS leave perfectly good letter-sized sheets of paper, although with a highly glossed non-stick surface on one side. Another no-brainer; it makes excellent high-quality correspondence stationery.
replace
Some items we knew are just bad: bad to make and bad to use. So we wanted to stop buying them completely and look for some earth-friendly alternatives without sending us into financial ruin. Industrial lubricants filled our shop, and it seemed we had a different petroleum product for each piece of machinery. One cutting oil for thread tapping and dieing, one for drilling and metal cutting, one oil for quenching and steel tempering, one for chain lubrication, one for gun barrels ... it went on and on. Every one made from petroleum, blended with carcinogenic petroleum-based additives, and giving off toxic fumes when heated. We wanted to clear these out of our shops no matter what the cost. But how? A chance conversation with my father brought up an alternative. When he grew up in the old country, they used olive oil for everything. After pressing the olives, the oil was allowed to settle. The best, floating near the surface, was used for direct consumption, the next level for use in cooking, a little lower for heating and oil lamps, and the bottom (just above the water) was used as a machinery lubricant. Eureka! We now use olive oil for almost everything. If it falls on the floor, if it gets on our hands, if it accidentally goes down the sink - no worries! It is very stable under high heat and leaves a pleasing aroma. [Corn oil was briefly studied, but it turns out that as a single season crop, it takes more petroleum to grow and cultivate the corn and then produce the oil than it does to simply use the petroleum. Olive trees grow with very little effort, and produce a crop each year with almost no additional use of petroleum.] One lubricant we couldn't replace is WD-40. But even here we've switched from buying the aerosol spray cans and now buy it in gallon cans, filling up pump spray bottles as we need them. Unexpectedly, our cost of using WD-40 has been cut one third. Not only is the liquid cheaper than the aerosol, but there is less waste when we use it. We also had some special degreasers and solvents used for removing rust, grease, tarnish and gunpowder residue. All gone now in favor of liquid dishwasher detergent, regular citrus-based cleaner and occasional chlorine bleach. Adhesive residue sticking onto leather is removed with peanut butter, and body odor on shoulder holsters is removed by spraying with vodka. Janitorial supplies got a look-over as well. Switching to recycled paper for some needs was fine, but paper towel use was wasteful regardless. Since we have to wash our work bibs and cover-alls anyway, we switched to washable cloth towels. Outside, our loading dock used to be kept weed free by using Round-up, which would run-off into our ground water. Now we simply spray with vinegar - it's non-toxic, cheap and fairly effective. Because our hands get very dirty, we were using a special liquid soap with pumice or some such for abrasive cleaning. Of course, when you buy liquid anything, you're paying a lot to transport mainly water volume. We found a great substitute by mixing a little powder soap with some of the finer grains that come off of our grinding wheels in our shop. Presto! Our concoction works better than the expensive stuff at one percent of the cost. One area that still gets us is packing material. We've made great strides in reusing material, but there does come a point where we do have to replenish our stock, and that leads us to Styrofoam packing pellets, sometimes called "peanuts". We still purchase quite a bit, and haven't found a good replacement. The most common suggestion is to use popped corn, but we have decided against it for several reasons. Popped corn outweighs Styrofoam by 6 times (increasing shipment costs), it flattens during shipment (lessening its protective capabilities) attracts rats (very charming) but worst of all is environmentally far more wasteful than Styrofoam. An entire season of cultivation is needed for each crop of corn, which means soil tilling, pesticide and fertilizer use, harvesting, processing, fungicides - all of which use huge quantities of diesel fuel and petroleum-based chemicals. And popped corn can only be used once for packaging. Granted, popped corn can compost easily instead of living in landfills. But in terms of the amount of petroleum that has to be pumped out, corn as a packaging material is far more wasteful than Styrofoam, and produces more greenhouse gases and toxic smog. {By the way, ethanol fuel is in the same boat. When everything is totaled, from seeding to gas station, you have to pump out 1.3 barrels of petroleum in order to produce 1 barrel of ethanol.]
recycle
Because of a very enlightened local waste management company, a very wide range of plastics, paper, cardboard and metals are now routinely picked-up and recycled every week free of charge. The incentive is very strong for everyone in Napa to recycle, for recycling bins are free, while charges increase for ever larger trash bins. So since reducing trash was definitely in our interest, we made it easy to recycle while working. Extra refuse bins are near work spaces, making it handy to deposit whatever materials don't have to go into a trash can, with no more effort on the user than to aim for a different can. Much of our "clean" lumber scraps now gets picked-up as yard waste. But we didn't stop there. A small compost bin is outside, so all coffee grounds, orange peels, half-eaten sandwiches, used tea-bags, in a word, anything that makes it past the shop dog gets tossed into the bin and soon becomes clean, natural soil amender. We use it in the flower beds and on the lawn (which is cut using a mulching electric lawnmower). And, no, the compost bin doesn't smell and it doesn't attract flies.
rethink
All of these changes slowly changed the way we looked at everything, and led us to finding creative solutions. Since we can't recycle Styrofoam, we could at least connect with a local business network and have them drop off their Styrofoam refuse blocks to us. That has turned out to be a win-win, for it's that much packing material that we don't have to buy, that much less that they have to pay in trash fees, and that much that doesn't go right to a landfill. When it's time to buy shop machinery, we first look for used equipment, saving us money and keeping one more tool from simply being scrapped. When we have to buy new equipment, we place a listing of the old item onto the local network website, prolonging the life of another machine. When making purchases, we look for the least amount of packaging that the items come in. And of course, we always look for recycled products, because nothing is really recycled until someone buys it again. When some remodeling to one of our shops was needed, we took the opportunity to introduce some green features. Skylights were installed, reducing day-time lighting use. As regular light bulbs burn out, they are being replaced by fluorescents. Temporarily exposed hot water pipes were all insulated. Passive heating and passive cooling features, very inexpensive to purchase and install, were added.
results
The results of our efforts? What was at first just a feel good experiment has turned up some surprising dividends.
By the end of ten years, we will have prevented the equivalent of a foot-high sea of trash poured over a third of an acre, eliminated the need for 260 barrels of petroleum to be pumped up, reduced emissions of greenhouse gases by 50,000 lbs, and saved our clients an average of 8% on every order.
how large is your theatre's footprint?
for more info, click to GreenBiz
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