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Green gaming
EGM Green aims to bring a 'greener', more environmentally friendly edge to gaming furniture. Company President Eric Hansel spoke to Casino International about the company and what they do…
They are the first manufacturer and designer of environmentally friendly casino products. As consumers – and gamblers – become more environmentally aware, there's no doubting there is a market for such products. We spoke to Eric Hansel, EGM Green President, about their offering and what the company represents.
Casino International: Tell us about the company and what you do…
Eric Hansel: EGM Green is the first ever manufacturer and designer for environmentally friendly casino products. We make Poker tables, Blackjack tables, we make seating for those tables as well as luxury lounge seating, and all of our products can contribute to a project’s LEED (Leadership for Energy in Environmental Design) rating.
CI: Basically you manufacture what you have just described as '100 per cent eco friendly products'. How long has the company been around?
EH: We’ve been around about a year as EGM Green, but we’ve been in the casino industry now for about 4 years selling home casino products through our company Executive Gaming Monthly. Most of our products are at least 92% sustainable by weight.
CI: Where did the inspiration for the company come from?
EH: I started going to industry conferences and listening to what people had to say and listening to where there were gaps in the market. At the same time I started talking with more and more casino operators, and realized that there would be a market for a product like this as the casino industry starts to look towards its social responsibility initiatives. This product can be especially powerful to a casino’s marketing strategy, because it is a Green initiative that sits at their Point of Sale.
CI: Is there really a market for this in America? The perception of America internationally, in environmental terms, is not really a positive one.
EH: Americans are moving further and further up the Green continuum. Whether by recycling or by changing light bulbs over to CFL’s, or even by changing over power sources to more Eco-friendly ones. As long as we continue to move in the right direction, I think that perceptions will change. We’ve done our first trial up at the Turning Stone Casino in New York, we had a lead architect speak at the Global Gaming Expo during the session “going green whilst staying in the black” and the CEO for the Oneida Nation which owns the Turning Stone Casino presented along with us, his name is Ray Halbritter, and he is viewed by many in the Indian gaming community as a visionary and his thought process is and has been that he needs to provide for the next seven generations. It doesn’t have to do with any sort of corporate green push; it has to do with the way that Native Americans think about their future, their family’s future, their land's future and their overall sustainability.
CI: What are your credentials for being able to advise on environmental matters and also on gaming matters?
EH: Well my expertise is in management and leadership, and our manufacturing specialist’s expertise is in finding and sourcing products to go into our end product that meet or exceed the levels that we’ve set for ourselves. We have partnerships with the United States Green Building Council, with a company called TerraPass, a carbon offsetting company, so we do what we can to reduce what we do and then we offset the rest of it.
We work with LEED consultants and LEED project managers who will not only assist with your casino projects to help you get from where you are to where you need to be, but they also help us on a regular basis as well. They also aid in figuring out where it is that we need to be and to help us get there. This is an ongoing initiative because as the nature of environmentalism changes there will be new initiatives that we’ll have to put in place to stay ahead of the curve, and that’s clearly our place; in front of the curve.
We use FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) certified MDF, which is medium density fiberboard. Our MDF has no added formaldehyde or, we use 100 per cent pre-consumer post industrial use foam for our cable padding as well as for the arm padding, and we also use stainless steel, we’ll use leather if people ask us to as an upgrade to a table. As our tables stand at 200+ pounds, we’re about 98 per cent sustainable.
CI: What other things have you looked at within the casino?
EH: We’ve looked at, and actually been approached about, making eco-friendly poker chips, and as you know the regulations are more stringent on chips, so we figured we’d get our feet wet first and then we’ll move into new products. We've started to work with a company on producing eco-friendly playing cards.
CI: Is there a significant difference in price between your products and traditional…
EH: Our pricing is totally dependent on the specs given to us by the casino/end user. We’re finding that in some places when we talk price, our price is lower than what casinos had paid, and then we’re finding with other places that their past price is a little bit higher. A piece of MDF that we purchase compared to a piece of plywood that we purchase is about five to six pounds more expensive and the price difference that the end user or the casino is seeing is at most 30 per cent higher than what they would have paid for a regular table. We’re really trying to set that 30 per cent cap.
CI: Is there anywhere you don’t ship to? And do you donate to some kind of carbon offsetting program to compensate for the shipping?
EH: We haven’t found a place that we won’t ship to yet. To answer your second question, yes we participate in an offsetting program. Corporately we offset power/carbon that we can’t reduce. We offset using a company called TerraPass I mentioned earlier, and when we sell product to an end user we offer the option of offsetting the trip to them and the trip from where it was originally taken, and then we also give them a certificate that they can display which explains that we’ve planted one tree for each table they’ve purchased. You can reduce something and by planting trees we are actually providing for the future. That’s what we do for our customers and we think that they can use these two items, the tree certificate, which is really a plaque they can hang up and the TerraPass offset they can use these two as truly powerful PR pieces when combined with their other initiatives and when combined with the table purchases.
CI: What kind of feedback have you had from prospective customers so far?
EH: There are really three groups we encounter; the first is, "we love it, we’re into green, bring it here". The second is "our bosses are into green, where do we start? can you explain it to me?" and it’s more of building a relationship to try to help them to understand why the bosses have chosen to move in the direction they’re going and how we figure into the equation and can actually help them meet some of the goals that are being set for them. The third is those people out there that think that environmentalism is not an issue they need to worry about. As long as they understand that it’s a learning process, then we’ll be fine as a company which means that we can help spread the word more and casinos can help spread the word more. Casinos are one of the biggest consumer industries in the United States; people go to casinos to gamble, they go to casinos to eat, to shop, for spas, to hang out with friends, to get away, for vacations, a hundred reasons and if those people can start to understand what green means and what it could mean for them and their family then that’s kind of where it’s at.
