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Foresight Design recently spoke with PortionPac COO Burt Klein about the firm and its sustainability activities.
What are your products and who are your customers?
PortionPac Chemical Corporation was founded in 1964 as a socially and environmentally conscious organization. We manufacture concentrated cleaning detergents in portion control packages to simplify cleaning while reducing the resources used throughout the lifecycle of production, storage, distribution and disposal. PortionPac is used by schools, building service contractors, correctional facilities, healthcare facilities, janitorial departments, distributors, universities, government and civic organizations to reduce costs and improve performance and safety.
What problem do you solve for your customers?
We did not survive because we are a green company and we sell green products. There aren’t many organizations making business purchasing decisions solely based on being green. To them, if it “meets all of our needs, plus its green,” then there is an opportunity. We continue to exist because we help our customers be successful. It goes back to the concepts of Natural Capitalism: business responds to the bottom line, not just to doing well or doing good things. We impact our customers’ productivity, effectiveness, safety and professionalism. We have done all those things throughout our history, and it is only recently that we have been able to communicate that these concepts help them environmentally also.
What is your competitive advantage? Does it relate to having Intellectual Property?
High concentrates and pre-measured were new ideas 40 years ago. Now, there are competitors that have some of those same elements. What differentiates us is our partnerships with customers. They are critical to our success.
Our belief has been and is that cleaning is very important and the people who clean should be equally valued. Therefore, since it is important, we need to give customers the proper tools to be successful -- to mix properly, to be efficient, to have safer formulations and packaging. It’s a whole design process, as opposed to just focusing on the formulation. For instance, by using high concentrates, we can package a 55 gallon drum’s worth of material in a case that weighs less than 50 lbs. which is safer to handle, easier to distribute and simpler to control and use. The design decisions that are made create a ripple effect throughout the whole supply chain.
What makes your products different from traditional/alternatives in the market?
Our commitment is doing what’s best for our customer…it’s not just a green line of products. As a company we have our values, and we bring them to our customers every day. It is not only about our products, but also how we can leverage our impact to change the industry and the future.
We help our customers with processes and procedures. In our industry the usual focus is on how much and how many different products can be sold. Our model is based on using the power of product design and support to help our customer use less and fewer products to clean better and more efficiently.
Who would you say is your typical customer? Are there any differences in how you speak to different sets of customers?
Our typical customer is a professional manager of a department that requires a high level of sanitation and efficiency in their cleaning. They want to raise the level of sanitation in their operation.
Yes, we approach universities differently than contractors, for example. Their needs and concerns are driven by different considerations. We elevate the concerns that are more important to each. For example, a university may have over 100 buildings, so they are interested in controlled and proper usage with the ability to move people and materials between buildings. A contractor may be most focused on efficiency of product and labor. Our customers also include some of the largest corporations which will have different needs than a small cleaning operator.
How do your customers measure their success (as it relates to PortionPac)?
Generally, our customers buy for the reasons that are most impactful for them so their success is measured differently. For example, with a school nutrition department it can be helping them in the important job of sanitation and food safety, in an office building it can be the cleanliness of the building and high profile spots, like a lobby, and for a university it may be the overall impact on sustainability. For all of our customers, I believe it is their success and how our relationship with them and our abilities help them achieve their success in a very important and challenging position.
So, it seems like you could either sell to many niches with different solutions, or create a comprehensive system that you sell to different niches.
Absolutely. With the same system, it also makes it easy to move, change locations or change people across locations.
How do you educate about the performance, environmental, and other benefits of PortionPac products?
We do have to educate potential customers about the benefits because our system is generally different from what they are used to. We do this primarily through trial programs. We will set up a trial program based on their specific goals then they can judge the success based on those goals. We know our products perform, but we also need to show potential customers that the entire system meets their needs. You pilot and prove that it -- the system -- works.
Once we have a customer it is important for us to educate every level of the operation, starting with the most important person, the janitor, and going through the organization to management.
Historically, we have tried to market the environmental benefits but it was never well received. The jury is still out on whether it’s that important to our buyers today. For our staff, selling sustainability has been more difficult than selling cleaning solutions that provide savings that are also linked to environmental benefits. We are elevating the environmental benefits in our messaging now.
How much do you encounter Greenwashing from your competition? How do you deal with it or combat it?
Recently, everybody markets their green accomplishments and their green line, but the more people start talking about sustainability, the more they will understand the benefits we provide. The goal is to clean properly with the least impact on the environment. So our competition would have to change the structure of their companies, even their business models to succeed.
Our response is education and longevity. With education the consumer is better able to make a good decision and with longevity we will outlast them because I don’t believe that Greenwashing is a sustainable way of doing business.
As a B2B company, are you combating Greenwashing through marketing and differentiation?
We are trying to. We communicate, not only about the products and systems we offer, but also about who we are and what is important to us
Are you blazing a trail for other businesses in your industry?
That was one of the company’s original goals - to change the industry. And, 44 years later, we’re still working on that.
Are Portion Pac’s cleaning solutions themselves more environmentally friendly?
If a product is going to clean, it has an environmental impact. But we’re trying to have the least impact throughout the lifecycle. High concentration reduces energy use but also requires that the formulations be safer than traditional products both in concentrate as well as in dilution. Recently, Green Seal (www.greenseal.org) has emerged as a certification leader in our industry. It’s a non-profit organization that creates consensus based certification standards that include mandatory formulation, performance and quality assurance requirements. Right now, 100% of our All-Purpose Cleaners, Glass Cleaners, Bathroom Cleaners and Floor Cleaners are Green Seal certified at the highest level of human health and safety requirements of GS-37.
But it is the packaging that has a greater environmental impact than the formulations. By using high concentrates and not packaging water we reduce cardboard packaging by over 97% over ready to use products. Our bottle is used hundred’s of times so we reduce the amount of plastic by over 99%. Recently, we worked with our bottle manufacturer to increase the amount of post consumer recycled material in our bottles from 20% to 40%. Our customers measure correctly, so misuse is virtually eliminated. There are more benefits to system but I think you start to get the idea.
What else has PP done to reduce the entire company’s ecological footprint?
We have always been lean and integrated many of those processes into our business model long ago. We are also competitive in other ways.
We committed to a public review every aspect of our company with Natural Capitalism Solutions and the Chicago Manufacturing Center (http://www.cmcusa.org/initiatives/portionpacoverview.cfm) that brought us to a higher level of understanding of our impact and helped us identify areas where we could improve. For example, in our pursuit of lowering our carbon footprint in the field, we are in the process of converting our fleet of company automobiles and vans to more energy efficient and lower emitting vehicles. We are also reviewing different and improved methods of sales and service to reduce the volume of driving including outfitting vehicles with GPS units and implementing video conferencing. For the remaining vehicle related pollution, we purchase Carbon Offsets through the Live Neutral Organization.
We are also in the process of getting our office and factory, built in 1934, to be LEED-EB certified. The steps we take will make us much more energy efficient and the energy use that we cannot eliminate is now certified 100% wind energy. Years ago, we completed a major relamping project that lowered our electricity costs. Our new insulated Energy Star roof coating is estimated to reduce our energy footprint by 35% per year. We participate in the Waste to Profit network to reduce our by-product waste.
Each initiative alone isn’t huge, but they each work toward lowering our costs and together begin to add up to reducing our impact.
Is there anything else you would like to share about the history or vision of the company for sustainability?
We were founded because two visionaries saw the practices occurring in the Janitorial Products industry and knew there was a better way. They were determined to change the way the world looks at cleaning and especially the vitally important job of the Janitors who are doing the work. From that day 44 years ago, our mission has not wavered. PortionPac pioneered the concepts of pre-measured, high concentrate and safer formulations as a foundation to a comprehensive environmental cleaning system that includes support and education. Still today, our products and systems are the most efficient technology available, and therefore we do not have a separate “green” line of products, just PortionPac.
