Going green often saves green.

While being good stewards of the environment has its own rewards, there often are monetary benefits as well.
This is how three companies found that going green helped both their companies and the environment at the same time.

Plug Power cuts out the oil
Material handling could be at the forefront of using a fuel that is part of the solution to conserving energy and reducing dependence on foreign oil.

Hydrogen fuel cells can replace lead acid batteries on forklift trucks, sitting where a battery does.
This is not futuristic talk, said Teal Vivacqua, marketing communications manager for Plug Power, which sells hydrogen fuel cells for forklifts.

Hydrogen fuel cells are being used now in material handling. In 2009, the company sold 786 GenDrive units to 300 distribution centers across North America, she said, and the future is in hydrogen cells powering homes and cars.
“It is important for consumers to see how they are affected” when cost savings in material handling due to the use of hydrogen fuel cells end up lowering prices on store shelves, Vivacqua said.

The cells and technology have 1 million operating hours, and that’s not field test but actual use in warehouses, she said.

Hydrogen-powered lift trucks run continuously and do not need to be recharged or changed during a shift, according to Plug Power, saving an operator time. Plug Power’s GenDrive units were developed with the material handling industry in mind.

And it’s a change people want, she said.

“They don’t like their batteries,” she said, because they take up space and don’t perform for an entire shift. Material handlers are looking for a cost effective solution, and the environmental advantages are an added benefit.

Byproducts are heat and water, with zero emissions. It takes a couple minutes for truck operators to refill the unit, which Plug Power compares to filling a car up with gas. But they run on compressed hydrogen gas, which is converted from liquid hydrogen. It is safe technology, according to the company.

Warehouses also don’t need extra batteries on-hand and the space used to store batteries is opened up. The company is based in Latham, N.Y., with offices in British Columbia, the Netherlands, Ohio and Tennessee.

Hydrogen is part of the solution to energy independence, Vivacqua said, and important to the future for cleaner energy that is not linked to oil.

And material handling will be among the first to use it.

Holjeron conveys its green efforts
You’ve heard of just-in-time inventory, but what about just-when-needed conveyor belts?

That’s what Holjeron in Tualatin, Ore., creates and manufactures. Or as they call them, the brains of smart conveyor systems to “replace ones that are not so clever.”

The concept is to run small sections – big enough for one box, about 3’ – of conveyors when something needs to be moved.

“If there’s nothing there, it just turns off,” said John Mosher, solutions development manager for Holjeron. “The energy savings can be quite remarkable.”

A study of a Xerox printer manufacturing plant in Wilsonville, Ore., by the Oregon State University Industrial Assessment Center found that replacing the alternating current motor system on the conveyor with 24 volt direct current motorized rollers saved 93 percent of electricity use.

“Energy savings are becoming more and more of a driver, but are still not as big a driver as the customized solution,” Mosher said.

Because only small sections run at a time, customers have flexibility to rearrange or expand easily, Mosher said.
“I think as we go forward, we’re going to see energy savings be a much bigger driver than it is,” he said.
The study found that the system has a year-and-a-half payback time.