Many manufacturers and consumers have recently taken it upon themselves to approach the free market in an environmentally-conscious manner. They have developed an awareness of how their business and buying decisions affect the world around, striving for conservation and sustainability.
This is a relatively new endeavor for most. Not Confer Plastics. We have a long history of supporting green practices.
It starts at the top.
The company president, Doug Confer, is a man of the Earth. He was raised on a farm in rural upstate New York where he gained an appreciation for the land and the plants and creatures that thrive upon it. It’s an appreciation that he carries with him to do this day: He still lives on that spread and, through the years, has developed it into a wildlife haven where he maintains woodlots and pastures. He has also built three large ponds which are frequented by all sorts of rare migrating birds. Doug also owns a forest in the Allegheny Mountains of New York that is carefully managed to support its own diverse and fragile ecosystem that includes orchids, boreal songbirds, bears, and salamanders.
His son, Bob, has followed a similar path. He, too, has a keen interest in the environment. He has aided various programs in the mapping and tracking of birds, reptiles and amphibians in New York State and he has led many elementary school students on nature walks. Since the summer of 2014 Bob has written a weekly nature column for East Niagara Post called “Exploring the Niagara Frontier”; each week it highlights a specific animal or plant that lives in Niagara County.
This is a mindset that the Confers have applied to their business. They have instituted a consistent, concerted effort to minimize their environmental impact.
You’ll notice that upon arriving at our facilities, which are just a stone’s throw away from the mighty Niagara River. Both of our tidy complexes are surrounded by woods and our headquarters is home to a marsh. These sites have become virtual refuges for animals of all sorts as they are the few woodlots in the city and residential areas in which we are located. It’s not uncommon to see deer, coyotes, hawks, herons, and songbirds of all sorts at our factory, right in the city limits.
Those facilities are cleaner than what people typically might envision. When someone hears “manufacturing” they think smokestacks and billowing clouds of smoke. Not at Confer Plastics. We don’t have smokestacks, nor do we put pollutants into the air. We have a clean and safe process that meets all state and federal emission standards.
Our operations are powered by clean energy. We don’t have solar panels or windmills, but almost all of our power comes from the Niagara Power Project that uses the Niagara River to create hydroelectricity. It’s among the cleanest energy sources in the US – no coal, no nuclear, no natural gas – just the power of Mother Nature herself. We have practices in place that minimize waste of that precious energy by conserving energy and investing in state-of-the-art capacitors and equipment.
We also do a lot to conserve materials. All of our plastic scrap is used in-house. It doesn’t go to a landfill. We closely monitor the usage of this material (called “regrind”) to ensure that there is little left over. Any regrind that is left over is used on a few jobs that can consume all of it.
The material used in our products is high density polyethylene and the compounds used to color them are free of heavy metals, ensuring their recyclability if you planned to dispose of your product…which we hope you don’t. Confer Plastics does not manufacture commodity or disposable items. We manufacture only durable goods of the highest integrity. Unlike many products on the marketplace, all of our goods are manufactured with long-term UV additives which ensure they do not fade or become brittle because of the sun’s rays. We don’t want our products in a dump because of poor quality. We want them – and expect them – to last a lifetime.
Many of those products that we produce for our clients have a special relationship to the environment. We manufacture for three different companies various styles of plastic gourds that are used to house purple martins, birds that have become totally dependent on human assistance in nesting. We manufacture a floating/suspended breakwater the environmental benefits of which far exceed a standard break wall. And, perfect for the marketplace’s newfound environmental awareness, we produce for a client their various composters, compost tumblers and rain barrels.