Portland State University Students Visit Local “Green” Auto Shop

This summer a group of PSU students visited the shop to learn how Bernard’s Garage (and businesses like ours) help protect the environment. The goal of their study was to better understand how the Eco-logical Business Program is helping businesses and create marketing programs to help other businesses understand the business benefits of protecting mother earth!

The idea behind EcoBiz (short for Eco-logical Business Program) is a certification program recognizing businesses that reach high standards in environmental protection. The completely free and voluntary program is designed to prevent and minimize solid waste, air and water pollution.

Debra Taevs, Deputy Director of the Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center (PPRC), said “it is our hope to create a marketing program to promote the business benefits EcoBiz such that more businesses want to get involved.”

At Bernard’s Garage we have always valued protecting the environment, getting involved with EcoBiz was a natural fit with our business model and we are very happy to help PSU with their study.

Here is the full text from the grantproposal for the study:

The proposed project provides outreach, technical assistance, training and evaluation to small businesses. It extends the reach and evaluates the effectiveness of the Ecological Business (EcoBiz) certification program. Courses focused on greenhouse gas emissions reductions will be developed and offered to new and current EcoBiz clients.

a. Project Narrative:
This grant request is to fund the creation of a program partnership between the Portland State University (PSU) Center for Global Leadership in Sustainability (CGLS) and the EcoBiz Program. The EcoBiz Program targets unregulated business sectors that can be driven to more sustainable practices by customer pressure. This partnership will engage PSU undergraduate business students in management of the Automotive and Landscape EcoBiz Program. The PSU contribution will include: 1) increasing the number of certified businesses in the EcoBiz Program through targeted outreach to potential participants, and increasing the number of consumers that seek out certified businesses 2) increasing the number and frequency of evaluation of certified firms, and 3) developing measurement approaches to determine and quantify the impacts of the program.

The EcoBiz Program is sponsored by the Portland Area Pollution Prevention Outreach (P2O) Team, a group of seven local jurisdictions and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. The program, which began in the mid-90s, first engaged with the automotive service business sector. The automotive program was the first multi-media certification program in its sector. Currently the landscape certification and the new automotive sub-sector certification for commercial carwashes are the only known multi-media certification programs for their sectors in the country. The EcoBiz automotive program has certified 132 firms; its second major initiative, the Landscape Program, has certified 18 firms. The EcoBiz model is successful and with targeted student input and dedicated staff assistance it will reach an even higher percentage of certified automotive and landscape sector firms.

In November of 2008, the Automotive EcoBiz Program for the first time acquired dedicated full-time outreach and technical assistance staff. In the first six months the number of firms contacted increased over 45% above the base program efforts of P2O Team agency staff. Currently, Clean Water Services funding provides part time staffing for the program within Washington County. Use of PSU students and expansion of a staff hire to cover the greater Portland metro area would be expected to yield similar if not improved results.

The EcoBiz Program already has strong working relationships with both automotive and landscape trade groups, three non-profits, and a variety of individual firms. Expansion to include student groups with learning objectives focused on increasing business participation and implementation of evaluation methodologies will: 1) allow students to gain real world experience working with small business owners, 2) expose future business leaders to environmental issues that will inform their future work, 3) expand the business participants in the EcoBiz Program, and 4) allow students to develop expertise around measuring and evaluating results of a green business program.

The EcoBiz Program has produced a comprehensive set of multi-media “best practices” that reduce or eliminate pollutants associated with automotive and landscaping businesses, minimize the use of toxics, water, energy and other materials. The project has been replicated throughout Oregon and been used as program support for pollution prevention efforts outside of Oregon.

This project meets all five of the P2 plan goals as well as all five of the national focus areas for P2 grants by providing multi-media P2 technical assistance through broad-based partnerships focused on regional environmental priorities.

Debra Taevs | deputy director
8040 SE 51st Ave. | Portland, OR  97206
T 503-336-1256 | C 503-889-6488 | F 206.352.2049
dtaevs@pprc.org | www.pprc.org
Twitter: twitter.com/PacNW_PPRC
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/PaulaDelGiudice
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Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center (PPRC):
20 years of helping Northwest businesses achieve sustainability