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January 15, 2008 - Green business begins franchising nationally

Fort Collins, Colo. – As people become increasingly concerned about the health of our environment, green business is beginning to flourish. However, while local mom and pop companies with green services are slowly popping up across the country, the trend is slow and fragmented. Clean Air Lawn Care would like to see that change.

“Franchising is the only way to create large scale change in a timely manner. And given the weather patterns we have been seeing the past few years, there is no time to waste,” said Kelly Giard, President of Clean Air Lawn Care.

Clean Air Lawn Care is a lawn maintenance company that uses clean electric equipment including mowers, edgers and blowers. The vehicles that haul the electric equipment have mounted solar panels which are used to charge the equipment during the workday. The equipment is clean and quiet; the business is carbon neutral.

In 2006 the company proved that they had a viable business model in Fort Collins, Colorado. Satellite offices opened up in eight additional cities across the country including Seattle, Portland, Denver, Boulder, Austin, Salt Lake City, Boston and New York in 2007. “The business could have continued to grow at the rate of 5-10 additional cities a year, but that scale just isn’t large enough to change the $15 billion dollar lawn care industry,” said Giard.

The EPA estimates that 5% of all air pollution comes from lawn mowers. “In order to change the landscaping industry, everyone needs to know clean alternatives exist. While Clean Air Lawn Care would like to become the service everyone uses, the company would also like to see customers calling their existing service providers demanding a cleaner option from them. Electric equipment, such as the Black & Decker lawn mowers, is already strong enough for us to use commercially. If the general public begins to see that, we hope that people who mow their own yards will seriously consider buying their own electric equipment. As more people use the equipment it will get better and cheaper and hopefully within 10 years, it will be taboo to buy a gas lawn mower.”

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