The magazine has Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover but inside is a photo of Ecology Coatings founder and one-man research department Sally Ramsey bouncing on a trampoline. She keeps one in her office.
Sally Ramsey: I have always been a bouncer. Even when I was a kid and didn't have a trampoline to bounce on. I get some of my ideas that way. I get some by accident looking at other things. I'm just kind of open. I still have a sense of wonder so don't really dismiss much of anything that I think about.
Ramsey was on the trampoline brainstorming a problem with fiberglass when she came up with an idea for nano-particles that could be used in coatings of many other materials. The company's specialty is coating metal and they do it without using dangerous chemical solvents. One of their first jobs was to coat Calloway's Big Bertha golf clubs. The company was under strict California laws to restrict harmful emissions.
Sally Ramsey: They went to everybody and we just happened to be the first folks who came up with something that would actually stick to their clubs. Sticking to titanium is not an easy thing, especially with no solvents to make life easier.
The local technology organization, Nortech gave Ecology Coatings one of its Innovation Awards in 2006 for its nano-tech coatings. Ramsey admits that using the word nano in its coating mixture is a bit of marketing hype. She doesn't explain what its made of except to say the particles adhere to a substance when exposed to ultra violet light. That's another green aspect: no high energy baking is required to cure it. And that makes it cheaper.
Sally Ramsey: It is so fast that you needed a lot less production time to turn out a product and you know, people are expensive.
Being green is good business these days but Ramsey says she came by it honestly. She comes from a family of chemists.
Sally Ramsey: I had a mother who read Silent Spring before anyone had heard of 'ecology' and I wasn't allowed to throw things on the ground like the other kids. so we had a green family.
Ramsey has used her coatings to make paper water proof and to cover metals with a coating that could be written on with a ballpoint pen. And in a city that is known as the polymer capital she's finding ways to replace plastic with bio-degradable alternatives. She holds up a tray that looks like Styrofoam but its made of corn starch.
Sally Ramsey: This I sprayed yesterday to make it resistant to water and we're working on stuff like this with a number of companies.
So that would replace Styrofoam?
Sally Ramsey: It would in many applications and of course it's completely renewable because its grown. So the only thing that would be chemical on here would be a very thin coating. Everything else would be renewable and if you want this to bio-degrade you just break it up and it'll dissolve.
Ecology Coatings has licenses with DuPont and is looking for other partners in Europe and Asia. They have an office in Detroit with an interest in coating car parts. Sally Ramsey says their board hasn't decided yet whether it will remain in Northeast Ohio.