Going, Going, Gone Green!

Aim:
To tighten up our ongoing and sometimes neglected “Green Policy”
A never ending combination of the general day to day demands of operating a successful business - staff shortages, ever demanding operating costs, governmental red tape and maintaining our levels of customer services. The huge demands placed on businesses have made adhering to our current waste recycling policy quite a strain at times – I’m simply being honest!

Anyway – The Aim:
Twelve months to make directlight.co.uk as green as possible!
After a very different, but productive staff meeting we all agreed to attempt to recycle a minimum of 50% of our commercial waste over the next twelve months.

Now a little over fourteen months on, I am very pleased to confirm that with a great deal of help and support from staff and other local businesses, and our more pro-active suppliers,

This is what has actually happened.

 

We are Green? Aren’t we!
We have always considered that we’re a fairly green company, but after a slightly different and rather heated staff meeting, (with a huge range of viewpoints) we all came to the conclusion that we could do more….

“That was just over twelve months ago!”

 

The target was set:
We were going to attempt to re-cycle over 50% of our waste within the following twelve-month period.

At first, nothing much seemed to change, so we buckled down and analysed what kind of waste we were producing.
As a fairly well established traditional company, we had fairly long established recycling issues!

Time – Costs - Effort.

Our waste seemed to mainly consist of cardboard, packaging materials along with hundreds of pallets some PVC bottles, printer cartridges of all types and general paper waste.

This is what we did!

“With some positive reassuring results”.

Firstly we rang around local companies to see if they needed our used pallets – they did, and they collect them on a regular basis. Job Done 100% recycled

We then set out to re-use every last piece of cardboard and packaging material that we could. (We were worried that our customers would react in a negative manner when it was obvious that their brand new light fitting had arrived in a recycled box), This was not the case!

All customer feedback suggested that, “As long as the light arrived undamaged the packaging did not really concern them”

So that was O.K. Job Ongoing 80% recycled

Printer cartridges now go to a cartridge collection company who donate £1.00 to the R.S.P.C.A. for every cartridge received. Job Done 100% recycled

P.V.C and glass bottles go down to our local communities recycling bins, thanks to a massive national green grocery chain! Job Ongoing 80% recycled

We now work very closely with a number of local businesses and take excess packaging from them to recycle it for our own use. Job Done 100% recycled

We only buy biodegradable packaging chips (100% recyclable), recycled bubble wrap, document wallets and adhesive tape.

Biodegradable packaging chips can easily be disposed of by soaking in a bucket of water or placing on your compost heap as they are made from starch and will dissolve into nothing.

We now produce 6 cubic metres of waste every three months opposed to 6 cubic metres of waste every two weeks. – We are continually looking for ways to reduce this.

Other Green Company issues:

Company Transport:

We now use local transport companies to deliver items safely to your door.

We also send products out directly to the shops we supply in this manner

This allowed us to reduce local van deliveries to a bare minimum.
Job Ongoing 60% done.

We sold off Managers' cars and relocated various members of staff to make more efficient use of company transport.

We now “embarrassingly” operate half the vehicles we used to at between 1.1ltr to 1.4ltrs engine capacity, which makes them all relatively green! Job Ongoing 50% done

Office and Warehouse Lighting
We have changed all of our warehouse lighting and replaced it with more efficient low bay fittings.
We use low energy “CFL’S” in most other areas.
All staff now turn off lighting in areas where they are not working.

Heating
We have fitted thermostatic valves to all radiators, and combination timers and thermostats to warehouse heating.

NB. Please don’t be alarmed if you receive less green packaging within your delivery, such as polystyrene chips! This is only because we are still re-using some of the packaging we have left over from our less motivated suppliers.

Acknowledgements:

For his influence and ongoing support in this matter.

Dr Tony Fry, Founding Director of EDF and Director, Team DES (Member representative)

www.changedesign.org

www.teamdes.com.au/whoweare_tony.htm

Introduction to RoHS

RoHS (Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances) is an EU Directive restricting the use of 6 hazardous materials in the manufacture of electronic & electrical equipment. This legislation came into force on 1st July 2006.

As a market leading company Directlight fully supports the objectives of this Directive and has been working with its suppliers to ensure that all our products comply with the directive in every respect.

About directlight & RoHS

With the introduction of our update website we made the decision to make our RoHS compliance information visible. When you view products on our website, you will soon see our compliant, exempt and under investigation symbols. See compliance definitions below.

Compliance Definitions  & Status Symbols

Directlight relies on the compliance information provided by its suppliers and as such we have taken all reasonable steps to confirm the status of products which are shown on our website as follows:

RoHS compliant 

• The supplier of this product & its components has supplied test certification &/or stated that it does not contain any of the restricted substances in concentrations and applications banned by the RoHS Directive.

RoHS exempt 

• The supplier of this product has stated that it is currently exempt from the requirements of Article 4(1) of the RoHS directive.  

RoHS Under Investigation 

• Products which are known to be affected by the RoHS legislation and for which we are actively checking the product's RoHS status.

Directlights RoHS Statement
Directlight hereby declares that finished products imported by ourselves which have cleared Customs on or after 1st July 2006 will be compliant with the EU RoHS Directive 2002/95/EC with respect to the following substances:
Lead (Pb)
Mercury (Hg)
Cadmium (Cd)
Hexavalent Chromium (Cr (VI))
Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB’s)
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE’s)

We will keep you informed of any changes.