Eco Depot

SPOKANE — If business at the Eco Depot is any indication, the Spokane area is gradually starting to embrace environmentally friendly building.

The brother-and-sister-run Spokane Valley business has been around for a decade with a foundation selling waste-oil burners and wastewater cleaners to industrial and commercial customers. But within the past five years, residential customers have slowly become half the business, buying things like solar panels, wind turbines and recycled denim insulation.

The small company produces about $270,000 in annual revenues while its owners dream of expanding to a 5,000-square-foot showroom complete with building materials like hardwood flooring, tile and countertops, all with eco-friendly properties.

"Everything we've done all these years has been reuse, renew. The market's kind of expanding in that direction," said Nadine Sullivan, who owns the company with her brother, Bruce Gage. "It seems like everything we do, we have to educate people."

Lately, they've been receiving a little help in that department.

The Spokane Convention Center expansion project and three Spokane elementary schools are being built according to sustainable building practices. Washington State University in Spokane just won a grant to study the effect of natural daylight in building design. And the state Legislature is considering a bill requiring eco-friendly construction of public buildings. In addition, Spokane Community College is offering a course on green building techniques.

Sullivan and Gage would like to see that spread more into the residential construction market.

"There has always been a certain segment of the population that's been interested in being good stewards," Sullivan said. "We'd like to give home owners and home builders a choice because there are alternatives."

Those choices include recycled glass products that can be used as tile accents around a fireplace or as cabinet pulls. They include "true linoleum," made from wood products and natural resins, as opposed to petroleum-based vinyl. And there's countertop material made from recycled paper by a company in Puyallup, Wash.

"It's been our goal to find as local suppliers as possible," Sullivan said, explaining that packaging and transportation distances factor into whether a product is considered environmentally friendly.

On Tuesday, Gage was setting up the shop's brand-new display of bamboo hardwood flooring, available at about $5.50 per square foot, not including installation. Bamboo is considered more environmentally friendly because it grows fast and would be an alternative to conventional wood. The bamboo comes in a variety of colors and styles and looks like regular hardwood flooring.

Pointing to a solar power system stacked against a wall, Gage said, "people think it's some kind of voodoo magic, but you know what? It really works! That thing really produces electricity."

Eco Depot started out as WOW Energy Systems -- Waste Oil and Wash Water Management Systems -- in the trunk of a car. The siblings worked their way up to a remodeled garage on East Euclid, then to the storefront on East Sprague about four years ago.

They initially took over a waste-oil burner business where they had been employees. Most of the sales were to public works departments, school districts and farmers -- entities that had fleets of vehicles producing waste oil that could be burned to create heat for a building. The wastewater systems captured, cleaned and allowed reuse of the water used to wash the vehicles.

Though Sullivan, a former elementary school teacher, has learned about environmentally friendly practices through her business, Gage has "always been kind of a granola," she said with a laugh. Gage, 48, belonged to the ecology club at Ferris High School back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Both are active in the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild, an association of builders, designers, homeowners, and other businesses interested in ecologically sustainable building practices.

Sullivan and Gage acknowledge the most obvious obstacle to green building -- that it currently costs more than conventional methods. For example, it would take years for a homeowner to recoup in energy savings the $3,000 cost of installing a solar panel system to heat water. But as it becomes more mainstream, prices would likely drop.

And the benefits, said Gage and Sullivan, are more based in lifestyle and philosophy.

Said Gage: "It's clean air for your grandchildren."

To see more of The Spokesman-Review, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.spokesmanreview.com. (c) 2005, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.