Foley Engines not only sells “green” products like exhaust scrubbers, but like all of us today we consider environmental impact in all that we do. The largest impact that we believe we have is in supporting our customers in keeping their engines and equipment running for longer with replacement parts and engines; Afterall, making anything has an environmental impact and even if your equipment doesn’t have the latest and greatest emissions bells and whistles. By not having to mine tons of iron to make new engines and equipment, there is a significant positive environmental impact and it doesn’t hurt your wallet either! That said, we also use other practices that you might find helpful in your own shop. The following are just a few examples:
1) Parts Cleaning. We clean using either our industrial baking ovens or most often parts washers using water soluble and biological cleaning solutions that help to actively eliminate hazardous waste generation. The old staple of most engine remanufacturers was a 700 gallon or larger, non-insulated “hot tank” filled with a caustic solution; usually containing Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) which would pick up additional harmful metals all of which are now widely know to have adverse health effects. We care too much for our employees and our community to hang onto that old practice.
Our large natural gas fired industrial baking oven can bake castings from as many as 6 Perkins Model 6354 engines at a time. After baking cast iron at 700 degrees or four hours, the greases, oils and paints into carbon; no harmful sludge or chemicals to manage.
2) Waste Oil Not Allowed. We have tons of engines coming and going from our facility on a weekly basis and have a policy that none of these engines are to contain oils or other quantity lubricants. An engine shipped with oil in its crankcase, is a recipe for spills if anything goes wrong during shipping and would take our team’s time away from getting customer order out as quickly as possible. To help people dispose of their oil in a responsible manner, we publish Tech Tip #33, Disposing of Oil.; to remind folks of the most common safe and reliable means for disposing of their waste oil.
3) Replace Old With More Efficient. Whether it was replacing our old sodium light fixtures with LED systems or our office heating and cooling with high efficiency heat pumps, there are always chances to improve efficiency. In both of these cases, there are also often incentives that take the bite out of a necessary expenditure making the more environmental choice even more financially advantageous. The added perk of many of these systems is that they also require fewer bulb changes and maintenance so we can all focus more on family, friends or our busy “To Do” lists.
4) Shipping Material. We opt to use packing materials containing recycled paper product rather than petroleum based product like plastic chips in all of our UPS shipping. This is a win/win: newsprint helps us save money and helps the environment. Our customers do not have to dispose of a box full of plastic chips or have Styrofoam peanuts floating all over the shop.
5) Ice control. In New England it gets cold, icy, and slippery. Rather than use salt on our sidewalks and loading areas, we use an environmentally friendly and animal friendly ice melting system that consists of particles coated with liquid magnesium chloride.
While a 50 pound bag costs slightly more than a bag of ordinary sodium-based deicer, we buy it by the pallet load and it not only is it environmentally friendly, it is cost effective.
