The Builders
David M. Knight, CEO and co-founder of Teragren (his wife, Ann, handles the marketing), may not have been the first to recognize the advantages of using bamboo. But Teragren, which is based on Bainbridge Island, Washington, is leading the way in exploiting its economic potential. Floors are just the beginning. Teragren's bamboo is being used for walls, furniture, and retail displays, and the company has begun producing bamboo building materials such as trusses, joists, and decking.
Teragren uses only sustainably grown bamboo--the roots are left behind for regeneration. The adhesives used in production contain close to no formaldehyde. Sales at the 18-person company are growing at 40 percent a year; David Knight expects to reach $14 million this year. "You can't build an environmentally and socially responsible business," he says, "without it being economically responsible as well."
"Our customers like our story, but they love our product"
A few years back, Miranda Magagnini and Peter Strugatz, two entrepreneurs who had become veteran investors in socially conscious businesses (including two on our list: Stonyfield Farm and Zipcar), came across a failing company that made gorgeous terrazzo-style slabs for countertops from recycled glass and concrete. In 2003 they bought the company's assets at auction and rechristened it IceStone. They raised more than $6 million from like-minded social entrepreneurs such as Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's to revamp the company's aging manufacturing plant in Brooklyn, New York, and provide scale to the original vision.
IceStone now makes a range of products--slabs for wall coverings and flooring in addition to countertops--in a 55,000-square-foot environmentally sophisticated manufacturing plant that employs green practices such as day lighting and graywater recycling. The machinery uses soy-based machine lubricants. Manufacturing waste is recycled into road surfacing. The plant will recycle 2.6 million pounds of glass in 2006.
The company's customers include Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFMI), and Equinox Fitness clubs--none of which is choosing IceStone just to do the right thing. "Our customers like our story, but they love the product," says Magagnini. "This isn't like buying a bottle of Honest Tea. Buying a countertop isn't something you do lightly."
The market in green building products is expected to double, to about $20 billion, by 2010, and IceStone is on a faster ride than its owners anticipated. "We're overwhelmed with demand," says Strugatz. "As a lot of people tell us, we have a lot of good problems."
How smart is that?
Talk about a virtuous cycle. IBC Engineering Services, based in Waukesha, Wisconsin, specializes in devising novel ways to make a building's mechanical systems more efficient, thereby freeing up money for energy-efficient insulation, roofing, and windows. Those architectural improvements require fewer resources and make a smaller mechanical system possible, which ends up saving money for the client. "No matter how green a building is, it still has to make economic sense," says CEO Fieena Zvenyach. "Very few clients are keen on throwing money at a project just because it's a good idea."
Since founding IBC in 1991, Zvenyach and her husband, Lev, have worked on hundreds of green building projects, most notably the groundbreaking Chicago Center for Green Technology. For that project, IBC designed a geothermal heat pump, which stores heat deep in the ground during the summer and sucks it out in the winter. IBC has brought that kind of resourcefulness to other projects, too. For a lakefront war memorial and art museum in Milwaukee, the company--which has 15 employees and expects 2006 revenue of $1.5 million--came up with the idea of using cold water pumped directly from the bottom of Lake Michigan for the air conditioning system. It saves $100,000 a year. "Innovation is not necessarily new technology," says Lev, "but changing the way you look at things."
