Circular economy
May/June 2021
driver was the return on investment made possible by replacing legacy luminaires with ultra-efficient LED versions. As with any business case, the lower the capital cost, the quicker the return on investment, and this, coupled with offshoring of manufacturing, created the low-cost LED luminaire. In many schemes the visual quality of the space and the visual comfort provided to occupants were very secondary considerations. Therefore it does not require much imagination to suggest that industry and governmental calls to deliver net zero carbon buildings will lead to a renewed focus on any building service that is a consumer of energy. By doing so, with consumption correlating to emissions, we minimise the need for carbon offsetting or as yet largely unproven carbon capture and storage. Will lighting quality again be under further pressure? So as not to be constrained by a blinkered, energy-only approach, we need to understand and communicate all the aspects that make up better (lighting) in a net zero carbon building. In discussing the theme of the latest SLL LightBytes, I suggested that we should update the Right Light, Right Place, Right Time mantra for a net zero carbon age and that this might usefully become Minimum Energy, Minimum Resource, Maximum Comfort. We, of course, have an unavoidable duty to minimise our in-use carbon emissions for the sake of the generations to follow us,
hence Minimum Energy. Maximum Comfort covers a wide range of requirements from visual comfort to wellbeing and the creation of fit-for-purpose stimulating spaces. This article focuses on Minimum Resource – the other half of the emissions in use equation, being the embodied resources used to build the luminaire and whether that resource use through life is in itself sustainable. The old joke about how many (fill in your stereotype) does it take to change a light bulb doesn’t work any more. The LED and the driver are often integral to the fitting so if one were to fail you have to replace the whole thing – you simply can’t repair it, life extend it, even if you wanted to. LEDs are more energy efficient and they are part of our green jobs revolution that drives economic growth – all that is true, but it is not the whole story. The huge (pre-Covid) growth of LED lighting had already brought its own problems. As an example, let’s think about the hospitality sector, increasingly the focus of ever more wonderful lighting designs. While each individual luminaire is likely to be fairly energy efficient, there are now many more of those fittings, and in a fastmoving sector new fit-outs are common. Now many would not unreasonably think that we recycled all those replaced conventionally lamped fittings, or those fittings ripped out prior to a hospitality or retail refit, but I present you with an
p The hospitality sector is increasingly the focus of attractive lighting but while individual luminaires are probably energy efficient, there are now many more of them and new fit-outs are common
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inconvenient truth: 'In 2019, 42,000 tonnes of lighting equipment were placed on the UK market,' according to Nigel Harvey, chief executive of Recolight. 'Only 2700 were recovered through WEEE schemes. The amount officially recorded as reused was zero' So what happened to all these luminaires, not forgetting that the WEEE
'The only person who thinks we can have infinite growth in a finite world is either a madman or an economist' – David Attenborough
directive came into force in 2003 so any equipment 18 years old or younger all proudly bore the crossed-out wheelie bin mark? The harsh reality was that much was sent to landfill. What did go to a grandly named Approved Authorised Waste Treatment Centre saw any value in your old luminaire literally shredded to recover the metals, which themselves would need energy inputs to melt them down for reuse. Green? No. We have to make better use of the resources embodied in our lighting equipment. An unthinking linear economy of Take (resources from the environment), Make (products in factories), Waste (dispose of products into the natural environment) is no longer acceptable. Part of the problem here is that we measure economic growth in terms of sales revenue, but we don’t measure our environmental impact. Before you start thinking that I’m a bit of a Luddite, stuck in a pre-LED world where everything looked better through (2700K tungsten) tinted spectacles, then I should point out that our industry is not alone. We would all applaud the rapid uptake of PV
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