It seems that every time you turn around these days, you’re
being enlightened to the benefits of “Eco-” this and “Enviro-” that and all of
these concepts seem to fall, in one way or the other, under the general heading
of “Green.”
“Green”
building, “green” products, “green” procedures, “green” certified; after a
while it all starts to sound like marketing noise. But the fact is the plumbing
industry, particularly the guys on the trucks going on service calls each and
every day, are in an enviable position to be able to act as liaison between the
“green” product manufacturers and the customers—people who are also bombarded
with the “green” message day after day.
Marlena Cannon is a spokeswoman for MJSI,
Inc., in Shorewood, Ill.,
a manufacturer of various water-saving products including the HydroClean toilet
fill valves and HydroFix toilet repair kits. She said “green” does indeed cover
a bunch of ground in plumbing, including recycling gray water, the use of
nontoxic glues, solders and fluxes, installing low-flow showerheads and faucet
aerators and so on. Bottom line for the tech on the truck, though, is pretty
basic.
“It’s a
chance for an upsell,” she said. “You’re called in because there’s a leaky
something. And you can say, ‘By the way, do you mind if I check to see if your
toilet is leaking? If so, here’s a product.’ If a contractor wanted to expand
his business into green, they could do that. You could tell customers they’re
saving water and the payback on the thing will take however long. You could
probably put together a chart showing how long it would take to pay back
various water-saving products to use as a sales tool. Those are the kinds of
things we have emphasized in our marketing.”
While
upselling is something that every plumbing business likes to do, there’s also a
bit of image that goes with being “green.” Steve Lehtonen, the executive
director of the California PHCC in Sacramento
has recently been instrumental in bringing an interesting green plumbing
initiative to U.S.
shores.
“My son went to study in Australia and I went online to get a feel of who I needed
to talk to if he needed help down there,” Lehtonen said. “I brought up the
[
Master Plumbers and Mechanical Services Association of Australia] Web site and
I saw the GreenPlumber stuff and I looked through it and literally within a few
seconds I thought it was an amazing thing.”
 |
| GreenPlumbers California—soon
to be GreenPlumbers USA—is
a partnership between the Master Plumbers and Mechanical Services Association
of Australia and PHCC California to work
together in expanding environmental training and accreditation into the U.S. |
|
The result was
GreenPlumbers California,
a partnership between the MPMSAA and PHCC
California to work together in expanding the GreenPlumbers’ environmental
training and accreditation program into the U.S.
This agreement has highlighted the important role the plumbing industry plays
in reducing the environmental impact in all aspects of the community.
There’s a GreenPlumbers
USA site under construction, and the national PHCC
is, “learning from California how
GreenPlumbers can be implemented on a national basis,” said PHCC-NA
vice president of government relations, Lake
Coulson. “The national PHCC
Board of Directors will discuss this with the California PHCC
during the upcoming board meeting in Anaheim.”
So, green is more than a marketing
ploy. In fact, going green is yet another way for plumbers to safeguard the
health and well-being of the population at large, according to Mark Wilhelm,
the principal of Green Ideas Environmental Building Consultants in Phoenix.
The company specializes in assisting architects, engineers, contractors and
owners in developing and implementing environmentally friendly building programs.
“There are
81 million buildings in the U.S.
and they have a significant negative impact on the environment. Buildings
consume 70 percent of the electricity and 25 percent of the water in this
country,” Wilhelm said. “About one-fifth of all electricity is used to pump and
treat water. Energy and water are closely linked. Water conservation is critical
to our future. People realize that efficient use of water is the right thing to
do. They link water conservation with green building.”
Pete DeMarco
is currently the director of compliance engineering for American Standard Companies
in Piscataway, N.J. Effective Nov. 1, however, he will be joining the International
Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials as director of special
programs owing to his knowledge of green technologies.
“In my
opinion, we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg regarding green consumerism,”
DeMarco said. “Plumbers that are early adopters will have an advantage going
forward on working with their customers and being able to recommend and provide
the products and systems that work best for their needs and provide the best
possible efficiencies and pay- back opportunities.”
What does
all this mean for the tech on the truck? It means he or she ought to become
familiar with the water-saving, “green” products available so their
availability and benefits can be brought up to environmentally conscious
customers.
“For
example, manufacturers are now offering dual flush and single flush volume
High-Efficiency Toilets,” DeMarco said. “They work on different hydraulic
platforms and have different physical attributes. The goal is for plumbers to
better match the products to their customers’ expectations. New programs like
the EPA’s WaterSense program identify models that have been tested to ensure
both savings and performance.”
It would be
overly cynical, then, to write the “green plumbing” thing off as marketing
hype. Wilhelm said the tech who knows water-saving and energy-saving technology
and product options—and offers these choices to the customer in addition to the
lowest-cost options—is providing clients with a real service.
“Efficient water
heaters (instant, highly-insulated and solar) and water-conserving fixtures provide
a payback to owners every day that they are in use,” he said. “Techs can get
these products installed in the field, which is what needs to happen to save
resources, money and the environment.”
GreenPlumbers’
is one way to gain the knowledge to pass on to consumers. It features a
five-point training plan, with water conservation, reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions, alternative energy sources for hot water heating, alternative water
sources, and auditing of buildings’ water and energy usage on the bill.
“What we’re focusing on first is climate care and caring for
our water—those are the most urgent,” Lehtonen said, adding the group was, at
deadline, a week away from its first seminar in Alameda, with another scheduled
in Marin County for the week of Sept. 27 on water conservation. He said those
seminars were something of a beta test of the concept to see what needs to be
tweaked in the program.
"From that we will essentially build a seminar schedule and
get it going,” he said. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I think that
ultimately, in order to reach as many plumbers as we need to, we’ll probably
have fairly large amounts of the curriculum online.”
Offering curriculum hints again at the potential for
national import for the GreenPlumber program. It’s not just a California
thing.
“Texas is very
interested as is Colorado and Florida,”
he said. “The Great Lakes states are beginning to
experience some problems and they’ll probably develop an interest. The water
conservation seminar is an eight-hour seminar. We’d probably deliver five or
five and a half hours online. Then they’d have a place in their area where they
could go and do assessment and whatever else needs to be done at a live
location.
Lehtonen said the nascent program is beginning to create
something of a buzz in the industry, and PHCC-NA
is set to spring for booth space for GreenPlumbers at its Network ’07 event in
Anaheim this month .
“They’re very excited about the concept,” Lehtonen said.
“I came back from Washington and there were three messages on my desk, all from local associations
asking when they could have a GreenPlumbers seminar. The contractors went from,
‘Ah, that’s B.S.’ to ‘We need it; we want it.’ It hasn’t been overnight, but
it’s certainly been within the past eight or nine months.”
Plumbers’ Water Audit
So, if being a ‘green’ plumber is, largely, saving your
customers money on their water bills, it would sure be a swell idea if the guys
on the service trucks had some guidelines to use as an opportunity to
substitute ‘green’ products for old worn-out pieces when inspecting a system.
Here, from Michael
J. Schuster, president of MJSI, Inc., is a six-point inspection you can use in
the field tomorrow to jump-start your “greening” efforts:
- Lift the
lid of the primary toilet and check the amount of water being wasted by
overfilling the bowl. Show the waste to the customer and recommend that all old
toilet valves get replaced with the water-saving units (like MJSI’s
HydroClean). Also discuss the benefits of its flapper leak detection function.
- Find and
replace any leaking toilet flappers with a premium flapper. (MJSI offers the
HydroForce flappers for just this purpose.)
- Recommend
the use of aerators on all faucets and carry samples. We recommend installing
one to show the customer the new flow rate and discuss savings amount (i.e. new
flow rate saves 15 percent.).
- Check the
shower. If it can fill a one-gallon bucket in less than 20 seconds, then
recommend replacing it with a water-efficient showerhead. Request full color
catalogs from preferred suppliers and keep a few on the truck.
- Recommend
installing an instant water heater on the kitchen sink to eliminate running the
water while it heats up. Again, use a bucket to demonstrate how much water is
wasted during warm-up.
- If appropriate, recommend the installation of a rain
shut-off device on automatic sprinkler systems. This newer technology is very
effective.
