Summit’s ‘big challenge’ Make sustainability appealing to small business Spotlight on Small Business Sustainability

Treat energy like milk. Understand that these are both commodities that fluctuate in price. Produce energy or milk when the cost is high and there’s money to be made from it.This is obvious to Adam Zellner, and all of the other experts and community leaders who spoke on panels at Thursday’s Sustainability Summit. It’s also plain to a large company like Verizon, host of the event at Saint Peter’s University in Jersey City.

But it’s not to small businesses.

That’s the primary reason Zellner and others gathered on Thursday, to find ways to remedy that.

“As you start to get down in the world of companies that are smaller, with more challenges, more jobs and more things to focus on, it’s difficult,” Zellner, president of Greener by Design in New Brunswick, said.

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Somewhere, the seemingly apparent message gets lost. For Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage, it’s in the translation.

“In our town, it’s both an educational barrier and a language barrier,” Bollwage said. “Most of the (utilities) speak English. And we (have residents who) speak 58 different languages in Elizabeth, and a lot of them are running small businesses. Getting the message to them is a big challenge.”

That challenge has led to the introduction of only 73 solar panel permits between small businesses and residential properties in Elizabeth since 2009.

And Bollwage doesn’t think current resources meant to incentivize alternative energy are an adequate response to the problem.

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He asked the audience to question whether the audits offered by utilities will appeal to that non-English-speaking small-business owner in Elizabeth or elsewhere.

“Who gets that flier in the mail and says, ‘I need to run out and get an audit of my energy use in order to take advantage of (this) program,’” he said. “You throw that flier in the garbage. I don’t know how we’re expecting people to turn a key and talk about energy as a commodity.

“They’re not going to call the local government and ask for help on energy — it’s just not a priority. They’re worried about (making enough profit to) put food on their own table.”       

It’s exactly those concerns about the bottom line that many experts are hoping to get across as being inextricably linked to energy savings and sustainability in general. 

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Paul VanGelder is all too familiar with the eyes-rolling-back-into-the-head response small business owners have to conversations about sustainability. They think about it as just another expense.

As vice president for power and energy market development at CHA Inc., an engineering consulting firm, it’s up to him to make the business-friendly case.

“If you walk away with nothing else today,” VanGelder said, addressing the 200-some business owners and others in the room. “I want you to think about an opportunity to save energy — any energy — as an asset.

“(There are experts) who will help you quantify that asset, figure out how to monetize it and put those savings in your pocket.”

At least in the case of the program introduced by the New Jersey’s Small Business Development Center, access to that sort of expertise comes free.

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And Ed Kurocka, panelist and head of the new sustainability program, added that its consultants may very well know some of Elizabeth’s many languages.

“A lot of (sustainability) practices can be cost-neutral,” Kurocka said.

The same message has long been broadcasted by Sustainable Jersey, a certification program for municipalities. Representatives said the cities that go green have their small businesses soon follow suit.

But amid all the advocates and their respective programs lingered doubts about whether the message was extending further than the event’s filled corridors.

Being sustainable may make sense for the small-business owners out there, Bollwage said, yet the fact remains: They’re not rushing out to do it.

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