Electrical Trade Magazine - Lighting Guide

Circular Lighting Live 23

An event dedicated to sustainable lighting

Circular Lighting Live 23 is a major one-day conference and exhibition dedicated to sustainable lighting. It will take place on Thursday 21 September at the Royal College of Physicians in London.

Outlining the importance of the event, Recolight CEO Nigel Harvey said

“The Circular Economy was once a fringe consideration in the lighting industry. But it is rapidly becoming mainstream as lighting specifiers and end-users demand changes in design and more metrics to comply with their growing climate aspirations.”

Delegate feedback from Circular Lighting

Live 22 told us what they wanted to hear. They told us the challenges they’re facing, and the topics they need to understand. Ray Molony and the Recolight event team have used this to tailor a programme for the evolving needs of lighting industry, manufacturers, suppliers, specifiers, and end users.

The Circular lighting live 22 conference and exhibition sold out over a week before the event was due to take place. With 250 registered attendees from specifiers, manufacturers and suppliers. overwhelmingly positive feedback was reveived. Circular Lighting Live 2023 is in a bigger venue, so we will be able to welcome many more delegates and sponsors.

Circular Lighting Live programme

The event will feature two separate tracks, one focused on manufacturers and another focused on specifiers.

The manufacturers’ track will open with a provocative keynote on ‘reimagining the lighting industry’ in a circular economy. It will be followed by presentations

on the ‘avalanche’ of green regulations facing the sector, remanufacturing, environmental data and bioplastics.

There’ll also be a ‘Dragons’ Den’-style session based on the popular BBC television series. In it, executives will pitch innovations and ideas in circularity to a panel of seasoned lighting manufacturers.

Designers, meanwhile, will explore design as a differentiator in circularity and look in depth at a life cycle assessment method created by lighting designers for lighting designers. An expert will also look at methodologies for evaluating the environmental impact of projects. This will be followed by exceptional exemplar projects and session on perception-based lighting design.

In this session, we look at best-practice methodologies for assessing the environmental impact of a lighting project throughout its operational life.

The afternoon will be a plenary session for all delegates. Presentations here will include the Circular Place luminaireexchange platform, solutions to waste from Cat A commercial office installations and a panel discussion of experts.

This will again be followed by inspirational case studies and at the end of the day, a drinks reception.

An exhibition hall will feature innovations in circular lighting from major brands including Signify, Trilux, Urbis Schreder, Casambi, Feilo Sylvania, Holophane, ASD Lighting, Bell Lighting, Commercial Lighting, EGG Lighting, FutureDesigns, Glamox Luxonic, Llumarlite, Regen Initiative, Silent Design, Smart Systems UK, Synergy Creativ, and TRT Lighting.

To register and learn more visit https:// circularlighting.live/

Images courtesy of Recolight

The drive to resource efficient lighting

Avital way of achieving this in the lighting sector is to make used fittings available for remanufacture when they are replaced. Re-use like this has much better environmental outcomes than recycling – the body of the fitting is retained, and the light source or control gear can be checked or upgraded. End users are starting to specify product upgrades, rather than complete replacements. For example, retrofitting a T8 luminaire with an LED light source. In many instances, this upgrade can be performed in situ, without the need for the products to be returned to the factory. Resource efficiency seeks to minimise the use of new raw materials in products. This change will require products that are more likely to be modular in design – with replaceable light sources and control gear. That means that if one critical component fails in use, the component can be replaced without having to replace the complete fitting. This improves resource efficiency and saves the embedded carbon footprint associated with making new products.

It is encouraging to see a few tenders emerging where Remanufactured products will also be considered alongside new lighting. Awareness that recycling does not usually represent the best outcome for end of life luminaires is much higher. That is pleasing because it means

end-users and specifiers are more likely to consider remanufactured product. Remanufacture can provide a range of benefits to end users but this must be achieved without compromise on compliance. Remanufacturers need to be diligent in identifying, assessing and testing remanufactured products prior to declaring conformity and placing products on the market, using methods appropriate to production volumes, end application and product type.

If the lighting sector is to become truly sustainable, it will need an ecosystem of companies with expertise in remanufacturing luminaires when they are removed from a building. But rebuilding,

upgrading, testing, certifying and reselling lighting products is no easy task.

Wholesalers and contractors can be a vital part of this process, by partnering with companies involved in re-use, and offering reused product for sale.

Recolight can support this transformation whenever companies purchase from Recolight member lighting companies. That support includes providing “cardboard bubble-wrap” to contractors, finding a company willing to reuse or remanufacture the luminaires, and even financing the transport from the site to recipient company.

Nigel Harvey, CEO, Recolight Recolight.co.uk

Legislative changes and end users are increasingly placing emphasis on lighting that is truly sustainable – products that are not just energy efficient, but which are also resource efficient. We need to keep products in use for longer, rather than simply discarding them, or needlessly recycling them.

Images courtesy of Recolight