In the environmental work that we do, we interact with clients who are all under all kinds of regulatory requirements. Um, they have to meet regulatory permitting goals for the discharges into the air and water that they have to meet when they're cleaning up a contaminated site. There are certain uh limits they have to achieve in order for that site to be used as residential use or industrial use. And in undergoing um investigations of those sites, many clients tend to do only what's necessary to to collect and spend as little money as possible to satisfy uh the regulatory body.
What we've tried to demonstrate to to uh clients over the years, I think we've been successful, is that our approach is a little different. Our approach is to take the uncertainty out of the final outcome about achievement. And many times one has to spend additional money upfront in order to satisfactoryy satisfactorily achieve your goal at the end. And so what we've tried to do is outline uh the approach we use as far as data collection to minimize risk for them and try to coach them and that well if it's all about meeting short-term financial goals then go find someone else to do the minimum but we're not seen by the regulatory agency as a minimum kind of uh company.
If you go to the the the regulatory agency, they know that Mandel will do a thorough job and will achieve goals 99% of the time in shorter time than most other people. So, uh, so as far as our clients go, our philosophy is not that minimalistic approach. Um and in in fact in some cases our competitors have taken data in the wrong places to help their clients show that they don't have contamination. Right? They they they they purposefully miss contamination in order to to to help their clients.
I won't say it's typical, but it's not so uncommon. And when we're asked to review that work, we'll say, "Oh my gosh, you have so many data gaps. here's where you need to spend the money money. The good news is we've been very successful and and the large and our our large law firms, large clients recognize that. And for some clients, how they appear to the public is as important as achieving the goal. So, they often times like the notoriety of doing the right thing. even if internally they wish they wouldn't.
That's just part of um how they approach it. So, so that's how we handle the the the client side of thing. On our own uh front, you know, we don't discharge pollution as a company, right? But we we do use electricity. We do uh generate waste. For example, one thing I'll just say is we have a recycling uh that we do for our company. And in Indianapolis, recycling is not required. Yes, that's the state of Indiana, but it's not required.
But what we do is we have a recycling bin and we allow all the employees to use it for their own personal waste. The nearby churches to use it. We pay for that. In other words, the local churches do not have a cost associated with recycling. They would they would if they used it. And so we use our own dumpsters to do that. And we've also um this is a small thing. But um but for the nearby Catholic Church and the priest over the last 10 years, we've paid for his composting bill.
So every morning when he comes out and works with his composting that composting is paid by Mandel and Associates uh for for the church for the church uh cost and I say well one of the French benefits of that is he tells he's told me that every day I do do that I go out and I pray for Mandel and Associates that uh they continue to do good work. So it's a little bit of bribing perhaps. Uh but but all to say this is that our our attitude is go to go beyond what's needed.
