Centennial Woods; making a green difference

Author: Ashley

6 Apr

A couple of weeks ago, I had the fortunate opportunity to interview the owner of a company that is making a green difference in the world. His name is John Pope and he owns Centennial Woods, a company that produces green building materials. But it doesn’t end there, or I should say… it doesn’t start there.

Have you ever driven through Wyoming? I’m guessing most of you haven’t. A good part of a Wyoming drive is vast wide open plains. Along the side of the road through the plains are big fences, snow fences. Their purpose is to keep the snow drifts off the road. Centennial Woods maintains the snow fences for the state. But not only do they maintain the snow fences they also sell the wood as a beautiful and green building material.

Brand new, fresh off the tree wood is put up on the snow fence. Eventually it gets weather beaten, dry, and needs to be replaced. The wood used to be left on the snow fence until it was broken and useless and then it would be burned or thrown away. But now Centennial Woods replaces the wood while it still has a useful life. The wood is then re-purposed into a green building material.

Check out this stat straight from their website: Centennial Woods has reclaimed 5 million linear feet of Wyoming snowfence, the equivalent of 85 miles; keeping more than 9,000 tons of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere and saving the state of Wyoming more than $9 million.

I think that is pretty innovative. I wanted to find out more. So I sent an email to the customer service department of Centennial Woods and asked to interview Mr. Pope. I didn’t expect to hear back. But much to my surprise, I got a response from Mr. Pope himself.

Here is the result of my interview (edited slightly)…

Wide Open Wallet: I understand that your company, Centennial Woods, reclaims the wood that was used in the snow fences and sells it. How does that work exactly? Does your company also install and maintain the fences for the state?

John Pope: Under its contract with WYDOT, Centennial Woods renews a substantial portion of the state’s snowfence each year. This renewal involves removing the fence face boards, replacing or repairing any structural components, and then installing new face boards. Our company pays for the labor to do this renewal. We pay for the new face boards. We also pay WYDOT a fee per fence for the right to do the work.
In order to subsidize this maintenance work, we sell green building products manufactured from the reclaimed face boards. Our current product suite includes siding, wainscoting, flooring, and other materials.
In addition, we build new snowfence for public and private entities that need to control blowing snow and dust, or that need to deposit snow in a particular area in order to capture moisture.

The unusual economic structure of the contract is a result of some brief competition that occurred 10-15 years ago by two companies that both wanted to do this work. Centennial Woods has held the contract since 1999. No other company has even bid the contract for several years.

WOW: How did this idea come to you?

JP: This wasn’t my idea. People around Wyoming have been using old snowfence lumber as scrap building materials for decades. Many of the older homes in Laramie have snowfence wainscoting in their finished basements.
In the late 90’s, I was briefly a partner in the business that negotiated the first statewide contract to maintain snowfences and reclaim snowfence lumber. When that business failed due to shareholder conflicts, my family and I decided the work was too important to abandon. So we started Centennial Woods.

WOW: Did you have any obstacles to overcome when you started this venture?

JP: We had no money, no equipment, no maintenance contract, and no customers. We surmounted those obstacles by bootstrapping — we bid and won the contract, called a lot of potential customers, and borrowed equipment to do the maintenance work. Eventually, we had a little money, which we promptly spent on growing the company.

We found an initial rustic market for the reclaimed wood products that supported the company fairly well for the first seven years or so. In the last three years, the green building market has caused our company to grow by 400% or so. Although the housing crisis interrupted our growth curve somewhat, we see continued growth at similar or higher rates in the future.

WOW: I did a little bit of research and came across The Blue Sky Group. You are involved in quite a wide variety of projects. Could you tell us a little about that?

JP: Our group of companies has been operating for about 10 years. Since the beginning, we’ve focused on building and operating great businesses that can benefit society while generating high returns for shareholders. Our primary expertise involves innovating technical and business solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Centennial Woods’ reclamation work is one example. Other examples include our fuel cell company (which manufactures affordable fuel cells), our historic steakhouse (which is updating the steakhouse concept while saving that little bit of Wyoming history), our natural gas sensing company (which helps companies produce more gas and less water from coalbeds), and our rechargeable battery technologies (which are directed a reducing the weight of rechargeable lithium ion batteries). While these businesses may seem non-linear to some people, I find that they all teach important management lessons while providing rare opportunities to do good — and even to change the world, in some cases.
Since we started, macrotrends have come around to the point where our energy and greentech activities are firmly in the mainstream. Our long history in those areas has given us a substantial headstart on the technologists and companies that are just now beginning to address issues like distributed power generation, affordable fuel cell technologies, increased natural gas production, and carbon sequestration. We’re currently working hard to capitalize on that headstart.

WOW: You seem to be someone who easily steps outside of your comfort zone. What advice do you have for people who can’t get up the courage to follow through on their dreams?

JP: Perhaps it’s my optimism that gets me into trouble. Certainly, my belief that I need to leave the world a better place, and my determination to do the right thing as quickly as possible, make me impatient and ready to take risks.
But it’s not easy. For example, our companies have been chronically undercapitalized since inception — both because our greentech activities have been on the fringe until recently, and because our community doesn’t have the kind of successful businesses or community fabric that create angel investors and mentors very often. Bootstrapping for 10 years can wear you out, strain your marriage, stress your kids, and stop you from accomplishing your goals. It’s not much fun sometimes.
But giving up is a poor option. Our companies have created scores of jobs that wouldn’t exist if I’d become a college professor. We’ve made a significant difference in reducing water production from coalbed methane, we’ve built one of the top reclaimed building materials providers in the world, and we’re on the cusp of changing the carbon footprint of the power industry.

So, my advice to people considering stepping out of their comfort zone is to assess the opportunity realistically. It’s going to be very hard, you’re going to wish you hadn’t done it, and, if you persevere, you’ll find the personal growth you experience to be unbelievably rewarding. Life is going to push you anyway, eventually — you may as well take the leap on your own.

pic by: jurek d

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post consider subscribing!

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Filed under: profiles