Business of being green

Climate-friendly courier uses pedal power to deliver documents and other goods

Julie Ann Grimm | The New Mexican

4/20/2008 - 3/18/08

The business plan is simple and the overhead is low. For conservation-minded entrepreneur Andy Otterstrom and his customers, the good feeling lasts all day.

As owner/operator of Creative Couriers, Otterstrom is still trying to find enough customers who want him to deliver documents or other goods without using fossil fuels. He's happy he's making a living — albeit a modest one — using pedal power.

"I can always use more work," said Otterstrom, 35, during a recent interview. "I have not gotten a lot of businesses. There are already couriers in town and I don't want to really take away from their business, but I want to find people who like the idea of their packages being delivered by bicycle using no gasoline."

Otterstrom is steadily becoming more of a downtown presence, darting around with a neon sash across his back emblazoned with the name of his business. He can carry up to 300 pounds on his simple, one-speed bike and trailer. Although his fees are flexible, rates are based on the distance and time. He also offers flat rates of $5 for same-day delivery inside the city limits for single items or documents up to 20 pounds.

Otterstrom and his family live off Agua Fría Street, so he tries to keep his business in the compact, downtown area. But every week he travels as far as Cerrillos and Rodeo roads to deliver new supplies of the Sustainable Santa Fe Resource Guide, sometimes returning home on the city bus. He's recently started a paper-recycling pickup service.

"I've always been an environmentally conscious person, and I'm happy to have this business as a way I can give back to the world I live in," he said. "I feel good that I started it. I see potential with it going further."

While Otterstrom's business is in its fledgling stages, he works as a substitute teacher to help make ends meet and occasionally delivers lunchtime food orders on his bike, although he prefers paper and other nonperishable cargo. He worked as courier in his native Minnesota and moved to Santa Fe about a year ago from Boulder, Colo., with the intention of starting the business.

"I consider myself a professional bike messenger. I have been at this for a long time, and I feel like I can get around these streets safely," he said.

It's not the roads or drivers that give him trouble, but the frequency of broken bottles he encounters. One of the items on Otterstrom's trailer is a small broom and dustpan for picking up glass in the road or bicycle lane.

"I have never been in a town that has so much glass in the streets," he said.

Otterstrom's ability to be a friendly face on the streets is one of the reasons why Colt Brown gave him a job. Brown heads the Locals Care program, which helps local businesses with marketing and rewards consumers for buying local with donations to charity and product incentives.

Brown hired Otterstrom to make monthly visits to more than 100 merchants who participate in the program, delivering new promotional materials and picking up comment cards and requests for information.

"He's really dependable and he adds a nice human touch to (the delivery)," Brown said. "It's important that we support people who are trying to do things on their own like that."

Santa Fe is host to other independent, environmentally friendly businesses including water-harvesting engineers, passive-solar designers, independent energy installers and others.

But all businesses can make a large contribution to the green movement, said Mark Walztoni, a human-resources business consultant who is also a Sierra Club board member. Walztoni is heading up a program that the Chamber of Commerce and Santa Fe Alliance are organizing in conjunction with the Sierra Club called CoolBiz. It's aimed at encouraging businesses to make commitments to reduce their energy use. A mailing will go out this month to nearly 2,000 businesses and organizations that are members of one of the associations.

"What we would hope to have happen is that businesses learn about some resources for saving energy and being more efficient and hopefully that they start to network with other business," said Walztoni.

Participants choose from among four tiers of commitment, the lowest a vague agreement to reduce carbon emissions, the highest a series of serious changes including subsidizing staff use of public transportation or buying low-emission cars for business use, purchase of renewable energy and buying only local.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.

ON THE WEB
Creative Couriers, www.creativecouriersllc.com

HOW TO BE A CLIMATE HELPER
The CoolBiz initiative asks business to commit to being "climate helpers" by following these guidelines:
• Turn off all unnecessary lights at night
• Turn thermostats up by 2 degrees in the summer, down by 2 degrees in the winter.
• Set the computer to go to "sleep" during short breaks during the day.
• Turn off computers, including monitors, at the end of a workday.
• Close outside doors to keep heat/air conditioning in.
• Use re-usable glasses and dishes at the office.
• Host a weekly bring-lunch-to work day to reduce driving and waste produced by takeout meals.
• Require double-sided printing; print drafts in draft mode; minimize color printing.
• Read and store documents electronically rather than on paper.
• Go paperless for invoices.
• Encourage staff to use fewer plastic bags for merchandise sales.
• Conduct an energy audit.

CoolBiz Web site: www.riogrande.sierraclub.org/santafe

SANTA FE ENERGY AUDIT PROVIDERS

Eco Terra Enterprises
(505) 795-5992
Audits range from $300 to $500 depending on the size of home and extent of audit. Also specializes in consulting for new home construction.

Alva Morrison, Morrison Home Energy Rating
(505) 579-4136
Audits are 15 cents per square foot, with additional charges for special tests.

Building Energy Solutions, Larry Gorman
505-269-2969
Audits range from $300 to $500. Gorman interviews clients about concerns and often finds they need something less than a full audit such as a blower door test with an infrared camera scan.

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