Portland company cleans up on green auto fleets
Oregon is awash in new green services, as even the dirtiest industries join the state’s growing sustainable business sector.
Hoping to capitalize on the trucking industry’s transition to biodiesel and low-sulfur fuels, TerraClean, a green home and office cleaner in Portland, this month will begin offering eco-friendly cleaning services targeted to fleets that want to go green.
Green cleaning “might be a new subsector of the fleet market, which could be innovative,” said Jim Hutchison, a professor of green chemistry at the University of Oregon, which offers one of four programs nationwide in green chemistry.
TerraClean, founded in 2003 as a petroleum-free business - its own vans run on biodiesel and its products are petro-free - has so far made its name cleaning buildings certified by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, which gives buildings credit for eco-friendly maintenance programs.
The company will use the same neutral, nontoxic, plant-based chemicals to clean trucks that it now uses to clean office carpets.
“Most power-washing companies use acid to clean trucks - we won’t,” Patricia Uber, co-owner of TerraClean, said. “There’s a real need for a high-quality (washing) service.”
Companies that have greened their fleets by switching to biofuels are looking to take the next steps toward running completely eco- friendly businesses, said Uber, a former wetlands specialist who has a degree in environmental management.
Traditional fleet cleaners contain surfactants, grease-cutting chemicals that are harmful to fish and other aquatic animals. When fleet cleaning services wash surfactants into storm drains, the chemicals pollute streams and rivers, where they suffocate fish by clogging their gills.
“A lot of use products that aren’t environmentally friendly because they’re easy,” Mark Fitz, operations manager for StarOil Co., which hires a contractor to clean its fleet of delivery trucks, said. The companies, Fitz said, “spray the acid and a degreaser to neutralize it and wash it off, and paint has been pealed off because of the kinds of chemicals they use.”
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality in the last two weeks has cracked down on four auto and truck washing contractors that illegally dumped their soapy water into the Willamette River and Columbia Slough via Portland’s storm drains.
“If you have these big fleet operations where they wash many trucks, it could potentially be a very big problem,” DEQ official Tom Rosetta said. “A lot of these people don’t realize it. They think, ‘We’re just washing some cars down,’ but this stuff is really bad.”
The DEQ requires businesses have a permit to dump into storm drains, and in all other cases it requires companies to wash chemicals into the sanitary sewer system, where they can be treated before they’re released into the water.
TerraClean’s fleet service will use chemicals certified as green and manufactured especially for cleaning stainless steel trucks by West Coast companies including Wilsonville-based Coastwide Laboratories and Vancouver-based Biokleen.
And they’ll collect the runoff once the chemicals have been washed, Uber said, instead of allowing it to pass into the storm drains.
“You don’t have to use harsh chemicals to do a good job cleaning,” Uber said.
Portland’s biofuels mandate, which went into effect in August, and the state’s new renewable fuels standard, passed by the 2007 Legislature, offer businesses opportunities to grow with green services, she said.
“I think through business we can make a quicker impact for the environment,” Uber said. “A profitable green business can lead and innovate using the values” of stewardship.