Pioneering Eco-Friendly Manufacturing
Few successful manufacturing companies remain in New Rochelle, but Allied Converters, Inc., a plastics supplier that manufactures bags, sheets, and rolls for food packaging, has remained profitable, even during the recent recession. How? President and owner Richard Ellenbogen, whose father founded the business in 1954, credits the company’s good standing to its 1990s renovation, which turned it into one of the most energy-efficient operations in the nation and an early example of the green movement’s possibility.
“Between the energy efficiency and the recycling, we are saving more than one-hundred thousand dollars annually,” Ellenbogen says. And that’s just the beginning. Since its 1999 renovation, inspired by Ellenbogen’s desire to improve the planet for his young children, Allied has begun producing energy on-premise through solar power and recovering all of the heat-waste for re-use in heating or cooling the building. This means energy costs that are approximately 70 percent lower than the average commercial facility incurs.
And, despite starting out long before Al Gore had won an Oscar and a Nobel, Allied Converters is still ahead of the curve in 2012. In fact, for now, the company cannot get any greener. “We have achieved nearly zero waste,” Ellenbogen reports. “We can’t go below that. Con Edison won’t allow us to add more generating capacity.”
