When Kim Caron launched Executive Mat Service in 1996, he could never have imagined that a business built around floor mats would one day help remote Arctic communities turn waste into energy. But looking beyond the expected has been part of the company’s DNA from the start. What began as a one-man mat rental business has grown into a company of about 100 employees operating in Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Langley and Brantford.
“When I started, I had no idea I’d be doing this 30 years from now,” says Kim Caron, founder and CEO of Executive Mat. “It’s still a family business and we are quite proud of the fact that we’re able to have a second generation takeover and put the energy in to get it to the next level.”
To Caron’s two sons, two nephews and niece who work alongside him, that next level extends beyond providing quality service. Helping clients reduce their environmental impact and work toward net zero goals remains a driving force behind Executive Mat today.
Long before “green” was mainstream, Caron was finding ways to reduce waste and energy use. When the company was asked to clean towels contaminated with ink and solvents, he realized the resulting wastewater could not simply be sent down the drain. He developed a process to recover hydrocarbons from the towels and use them as fuel to help power the company’s high-pressure steam boiler.
That same thinking led to the Green Thumb initiative. Executive Mat supplies clients with products such as paper towels, disposable cups and paper exam bed liners, and began collecting the used materials and converting it into energy.
“We’ve been taking landfill-destined waste and converting it into clean energy for more than a decade,” Caron says. “Instead of clients sending the waste to landfill, we pick it up like a laundry bag, bring it back here and process it into biofuel briquettes that fuel the biomass boiler.”
The company can process about one tonne of waste a day into fuel for its mat laundry operations and heat for its facility. Caron later devised a way to upcycle clients’ coffee pods, some of which are shipped from as far away as Vancouver, to keep them out of landfill while harnessing their high energy value. These services are a natural extension of the Executive Mat’s business model. The company already visits customer sites to exchange and collect floor mats, so picking up consumables at the same time eliminates additional trips and can reduce landfill waste.
The Green Thumb initiative led to the creation of Eco-Growth Environmental, a standalone company commercializing the technologies developed within the mat service business. Eco-Growth received a significant boost after winning a Department of National Defence Pop-up City contest aimed at designing sustainable utilities for temporary military camps. Its waste-to-energy technology took the first-place prize of $2 million.
“That technology was incubated within Executive Mat Service and when it got legs of its own, we rolled it out as a separate company,” says Caron. “The contest really kickstarted that business unit. We’ve taken orders as far away as the High Arctic for contained units where they can take their community waste and upcycle it and heat the buildings within their communities instead of putting it in the landfill.”
He sees considerable potential in remote and northern communities where landfill space and energy costs present significant challenges. Eco-Growth reflects a pattern repeated throughout Executive Mat’s history: a solution developed to solve an internal problem can become a business opportunity in its own right.
The same is true of the company’s floor mat technology. Caron developed a patented cleaning system that significantly reduced the water and energy required to wash and dry mats.
Executive Mat is preparing to expand through a franchise-style model where operators purchase the company’s cleaning equipment and receive centralized administration and IT support from Calgary. The first units are destined for St. Louis and Houston with potential installations in Wisconsin, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.
The company is also using its experience to help build capacity closer to home. Executive Mat partnered with Askiy Mat Service, an Indigenous-owned company that adopted the technology and business model to grow across Canada. Supporting Indigenous participation and Canadian-owned businesses like this one has become increasingly important to Caron. Canada’s mat service industry is dominated by large American companies, making it difficult for smaller Canadian operators to build the scale needed to compete. Executive Mat has spent 30 years proving that a Canadian company can thrive and outcompete these large companies, and the organization is looking to grow its presence across the country to build up the Canadian economy.
“We changed the industry by developing our own cleaning technology,” he says. “Our profits actually stay in Canada and get reinvested in our country, and they go towards developing companies like Eco-Growth while we build a more resilient economy.”
As one of the largest independent mat companies in North America, Executive Mat’s focus on delivering superior products while reducing environmental impact is becoming increasingly relevant as organizations look more closely at their supply chains and carbon footprints. Caron points to Scope 3 emissions, the indirect emissions associated with the products and services a company purchases, as an area businesses can no longer afford to overlook.
“If you’re going to be carbon net zero, it’s not just putting in solar panels. You have to address your whole supply chain,” he says. “We make it really easy for people to be green and environmentally friendly. All they have to do is deal with us,” Caron says.
With the next generation ready to move the business forward with him, Caron is looking to expand into every major Canadian market while bringing the company’s technology to the United States. While this seems an ambitious vision, Executive Mat Service’s 30-year history with floor mats shows how ordinary products can lead to unexpected possibilities when someone is willing to think outside the box.