The Converts
Laura Roberts was a tree-hugging elementary school teacher. Now she's cleaning up some of the dirtiest industries around
"If you say a product is green, people automatically assume that it doesn't work or it's more expensive," says Laura Roberts, CEO of Pantheon Chemical. Her mission is to prove the skeptics wrong. Considering that Roberts had no business experience when she took over the Phoenix-based company after her father's death in 1997, and that she's taking on some of the dirtiest materials around--industrial cleaners and solvents--it's quite a task.
Pantheon's flagship product, PreKote, which is used to prep aircraft for painting, is an alternative to the conventional products that contain hexavalent chromium, the stuff of the Erin Brockovich lawsuits. Pantheon also makes nontoxic cleaners and lubricants for firearms, biodegradable metalworking fluids, nonhazardous solvents for the asphalt industry, and a wide line of cleaners for the hospitality industry. None of these industries are known for embracing change, but Roberts is slowly gaining converts. Both Continental Airlines (NYSE:CAL) and Air Canada use PreKote. The Air Force is onboard, too. "The military wants to reduce workers' exposure to hazardous chemicals," says Roberts. Hill Air Force Base near Ogden, Utah, won an award from the EPA--just for switching to PreKote.
Meet the bar-code-scanner reseller who has a bold plan to save the world
It hardly looks like the type of business that's out to save the planet. The Ryzex Group, based in Bellingham, Washington, sells and repairs new and used bar code scanners and data-collection equipment. But CEO Rud Browne started the business because he was sick of seeing old machines wind up in landfills when companies upgraded their systems. If Ryzex can't find the machines a home, it dismantles them and sells the parts to recyclers. And the commitment to sustainability doesn't end there. This year, the company, which expects revenue of $75 million in 2006, went 100 percent waste-free--trash cans disappeared and staffers began recycling everything, even leftovers from lunch. To date, Ryzex has recycled 225,000 pounds of garbage, including over 15,000 pounds of paper, 1,400 pounds of bubble wrap, and countless Chinese food containers.
Browne says Ryzex's recycling program will turn a profit in a few months. And he's not done yet. He wants to recycle other companies' electronic junk, too. "I'm not interested in running a business that's profitable on one end but funding unprofitable environmental practices on the other," he says. "The way to solve the world's environmental problems is to show that you can make more money doing things the right way rather than the wrong way." Ryzex's financial success has spawned rivals in the refurbished bar code business. Says Browne: "Whether they think of themselves as having an environmental impact or not, they are."
New Leaf Paper proves you can make a business out of saving trees
Jeff Mendelsohn estimates that he's saved a million trees so far. More than half the fiber used in the company's sustainable paper products comes from old paper that's mashed to a pulp and whitened without chlorine, reducing toxic emissions that otherwise pollute the waterways. The result: bright-white paper marketed under names such as Reincarnation and Encore and company revenue of nearly $20 million.
Mendelsohn got his start in the paper business after college, running a printing service in New York City that used ecofriendly paper--or at least what was considered so back then. Most, he says, had 30 percent or less recycled content. So he started New Leaf Paper, based in San Francisco, in 1998 to make his own paper. When companies like the Gap (NYSE:GPS) and Nike (NYSE:NKE) signed up as customers, the industry took notice. A couple of years ago, New Leaf was the only company selling bright-white stationery made from recycled content. Today there are about five competitors, a sign to Mendelsohn that he's inching closer to his goal of creating a new kind of paper industry. "If all we did was pioneer a market, we haven't succeeded," he says. "In order for the industry to change, it has to change from within."
