Today’s Good News: Auto Maintenance Goes Green
I consider myself blessed to be carless since 1994. I remember, though, worrying about the used oil and various wastes that my car would create. AAMCO, the auto service company, has started an innovative green program, showing once again, that going green is good business.
I learned about this from the Greener Buildings newsletter. Todd Leff, the CEO of AAMCO, described the program in an interview: “It’s really a two-pronged approach to the issue, and because we are a franchise model, we need to demonstrate to our center owners that, one, there are new services you can market that are eco friendly that customers want, and that will help the environment; and …there are things that, as business owners, we can do in the shop to operate in a more environmentally conscious way, but also will save the business money. And so the bottom line is that being green can be good business.”
The stores can really cut down on their waste, as well as their waste-disposal costs, by using a couple of new systems. One machine takes the solvent they use to clean transmissions and cleans it up. Instead of having to get rid of all the solvent, they wind up with a quarter-sized cake of the gunk that was in there, and they can re-use the solvent. They’ve also found a way to use waste oil and tranmission fluid in their heating system.
Why now? It’s a combination of state regulators coming down harder on the automotive aftermarket - a big source of waste and toxic waste - and a recognition that consumers want more sustainable alternatives.
There’s a lot more, if you’re interested, check out the interview here.
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