AgriFleet Sees Monthly Savings From Its Efforts to Go Green

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

AUBURNDALE | Going green is pretty trendy nowadays, but for AgriFleet Leasing Corp., the environmental effort began way back in 1997.

The company, located at 100 Thornhill Road in Auburndale, manufactures and leases agricultural trailers primarily to fertilizer manufacturers, farmers’ cooperatives and select companies in the sugarcane industry.

Darren Swander, the vice president of operations, has worked at the company since it opened 12 years ago. Its work toward being green started shortly afterward.

“We started with (a Florida Department of Environmental Protection inspector’s) recommendations and have continued with projects that not only are environmentally friendly but (also) save the company money,” Swander said.

Swander said that the company defines green as “using less energy and products that have the least impact on the land, its water and the air.”

“Because we are a manufacturing facility that utilizes sandblasting and painting, we are subject to (FDEP) and Environmental Protection Agency regulations,” Swander said. “We try and not just comply with such regulations, but beat them to the best of our ability.”

Making AgriFleet Leasing green took commitments in many different areas.

“It took commitment from the owners and management to invest the money and a commitment from the employees to not only see the projects through, but continue with their improvement and advancement,” Swander said.

It also took teamwork from the employees to maintain the green efforts.

“Thankfully we have an operations manager, Steve Harp, who is obsessive about a clean workplace, and an office manager, Merry Beth Vardeh, who has taken on all of the substantial reporting, paperwork and administrative tasks of tracking our recycling and air impacts,” he said.

Swander said the largest project was changing every lighting fixture in the manufacturing buildings and offices to more energy-efficient fluorescent fixtures.

The company has also implemented more recycling projects.

“As far as the manufacturing process goes, we have reduced our paint waste by 90 percent by recycling our thinners with in-house equipment. We have reduced visible emissions of our sandblast loading with a device known as a baghouse. We hired an outside company to do air pressure tests on our plant and ultimately changed to a variable speed compressor, which is much more efficient than the unit we had been using,” Swander said.

Making AgriFleet Leasing green has required a monetary investment as well. Swander said that AgriFleet Leasing has invested about $80,000 in environmentally friendly or energy-saving projects over the last 10 years.

“It can be easier and cheaper to use products and processes that are not considered green, but typically those are only short-term savings, not long-term,” Swander said.

The investments have paid off for AgriFleet Leasing.

“The environmental projects are hard to measure tangibly. Their payoff is in a clean and safe workplace,” Swander said.

“The energy projects save us about $1,500 per month in reduced electric bills.”

“The changes we have made have all exceeded our expectations and will only (inspire) us to do more as we can afford (it). We are currently looking at additional energy-saving technologies and how they can work in our environment, like solar,” Swander said.

Vardeh said the company plans to look into wind turbines as an alternative energy source as well.

“I am proud to be a part of a company that respects the environment,” Vardeh said.

For more information, click here.