Manufacturers take long-term 'green' view

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Sep 19, 2008 by Schofield, Ashley

SYRACUSE - Area manufacturers pursuing green strategies are increasingly including them into their long-term company plans and a part of everything they do, interviews with some of the region's key manufacturing officials reveal.

Implementing sustainability in every aspect of the work environment is the next step for most manufacturers, says Randall Wolken, president of the Manufacturers Association of Central New York (MACNY), which represents 325 members in 19 counties across upstate New York.

"A holistic approach is key," Wolken says. "It is a big focus this year to look at all aspects of green and what it means."

At the Welch Allyn, Inc. manufacturing site in Skaneateles Falls, the company is looking to implement green into its existing buildings, not just in its 125,000-square-foot expansion, for which it is hoping to obtain LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.

"We're trying to incorporate [green] more and more," says Scott Spanfelner, director of operations at Welch Allyn.

The company has even started testing waterless urinals. They don't cost anymore than traditional urinals, and the water savings add up, he says.

Waterless urinals can help cut water usage in half, according to the U.S. Green Building Council's Web site.

The Anheuser-Busch brewery in Lysander wants to cut energy expenditures by looking into building a power plant utilising biomass - primarily willow shrubs and wood scraps, Steve McCormick, plant manager, says in an e-mail.

"[It would be] a power plant that would not only be capable of providing much of the brewery's energy," McCormick says. "But [it] could also have the capacity to produce power that could be sold to the local utility grid and supply power throughout the entire region."

The Lysander brewery has been working with Honeywell International Inc. and scientists from the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry for three years to cultivate shrub willows near Onondaga Lake, which can be harvested for energy, McCormick says.

"When the new plants are harvested three years from now, they can be mixed with other woods and made into pellets for stoves or used by power plants to generate renewable electricity and heat," he says.