Even without leaving a footprint, Brian Scheinblum is gaining quite a following.
Through green cleaning supplies, new light bulbs, efficient HVAC systems and the LEED-certified buildings themselves, he’s trying to make Cambean Hospitality LLC carbon-neutral. And he can back every green decision for customers, investors and his 70 employees.
“Any time you make changes, it takes time for people to understand the reasoning behind it,” says Scheinblum, president of the hotel management company.
He began by hiring HVS, a hotel valuation and consulting firm, to conduct an operations sustainability analysis to quantify the company’s greenness. And then, as he acted on its suggestions to be more energy-efficient, he researched every step to make sure that it benefited more than his own eco-consciousness.
“We’ve learned that there are considerable saving opportunities, which will give us — hopefully — an advantage over some of our competitors with a lower cost structure,” says Scheinblum, who led the company to 2008 revenue of about $10 million.
Smart Business spoke with Scheinblum about how to be sure about being green — and how that convinces others to follow.
Analyze potential savings. I strongly recommend to anybody out there that they analyze what their [energy] costs are, what their impact on the environment is and what the benefits are.
[To conduct an operations sustainability analysis], they do a full walkthrough of the property, looking at everything that utilizes energy. We looked at transportation of our employees. We looked at transportation of trash. Of course, we have the standard: the gas usage, the electricity usage, water usage.
They gave us an analysis of what we were spending and then they gave recommendations of things that we can do, costs to do these different things and what the savings would be. Like our water fixture retrofit — they’re estimating an $800 cost and the payback period of .8, which means the return on investment’s 125 percent. So that’s something that we look at and say, ‘OK, that’s something that we should do immediately because there’s a great return on investment.’ And this was a matter of just changing aerators on faucets.
I’m not saying that somebody has to go out there and hire a company to do this. I think people can do this themselves. They can find all of that data within their operations. Look at all the different light bulbs. Look at all the different faucets, the toilets, everything else that they’re using and say, ‘Where can I get savings here?’
It’s pretty easy to go online these days and do a search and see the cost of a replacement item and make a determination: ‘OK, well, if I’m using a 60-watt bulb now but my replacement bulb is a 13-watt compact fluorescent, I’ve saved 47 watts. My cost per watt on my electric bill is this amount. I’ve paid for that replacement bulb in six months. I’ve got a 200 percent return on investment.’ It’s pretty simple math; it’s a matter of taking the time and making the effort. These are not things that just necessarily help the environment; they definitely help the operating cost of any business.