You are what you sell

Every day, while I'm out and about trying to help my clients become more energy efficient, I look at things that are easy to grasp - lighting as an example, which consumes as much as 70% of the total electric bill.  In hospitality and healthcare, I look at commercial laundry, and the potential to reduce hot water and chemicals.  One thing that has always bothered me was the ever present vending machine.  Here I am, walking through a Kosher nursing home where they don't allow outside food to come in, but they have no issue selling Snapple in a refrigerated vending machine.  I found a PDF created by Southern California Edison back in 2003, talking about how an average company spends $250/year on electricity to run each of these inefficient vending machines.  If you trend that forward to today's rates, which are essentially double what they were five years ago, this is more than $500/year in electricity.  At the time of the PDF, supposedly there were 4 million in service nationally.  Factoring in what is typically served in the vending machines, I have to ask any property manager if it's even worth keeping them, especially if it's a property with a cafeteria or access to a nearby convenience store (schools, healthcare, hospitality, malls).  Note - If you remember my previous post about TerraCycle using worm poop as fertilizer as opposed to chemicals, they are at it again.  TerraCycle is now recycling yogurt cups, juice paks, cookie wrappers and more.  Raise money and do something good for the environment. 

Coke says no one wants to pay for the more efficient models.  I know who's paying the electric bills, and I have a pretty good idea of the result of the consumption.  So can anyone guess what my solution would be?