OUR NET ZERO CARBON ASPIRATIONS
“Dextra Group plc has a long established history of market leading technological innovation and process sustainability. Our goal to reach zero carbon emissions is in line with the United Nation’s Climate Change Race to Zero campaign by 2050. The science based target of limiting global warming levels to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is ambitious but imperative if nationally we are to establish a de-carbonised economy and Dextra Group is a willing contributor in the race.”
Natasha Ward – Group COO
SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING
Our rapidly changing world highlights the need for all of us to change our consumption patterns and minimise waste. The concept of the circular economy and a new ethos focused on maximising longevity bring obvious benefits for suppliers, consumers and our environment as a whole.
At Dextra our focus has long been on ensuring that all elements of our business minimise our environmental impact not only at the product level but in every aspect of the company.
The introduction of legislation intended to simplify repair and maximise product life cycles should be welcomed by all and brings a renewed focus on ensuring our entire product range can be repaired, maintained and easily recycled whilst also ensuring that the entire production process has a minimal effect on the environment.
At Dextra we have made great steps towards improving the sustainability of our product ranges, here are just some of the measures we have taken to ensure that our luminaires minimise their environmental impact:
Our luminaires have always been designed for simple field maintenance. Our components are fitted with easily removed push fit plastic rivets or pan pozi screws ensuring they can be removed with basic and widely available tools. We only use components from European brands such as Philips, Osram and Tridonic ensuring that replacement parts are readily available through a wide range of sources.
We see many imported products which are completely sealed and use bespoke bare circuits instead of replaceable drivers, this design method ensures that any one component failure renders the entire product obsolete requiring complete replacement.
Simple replacement of parts in the event of failure is only one part of the lifecycle story, ensuring longevity at the outset is equally important in reducing the waste and environmental impact of our product ranges.
We only use premium components offering best lifetime, our drivers provide 100,000 operating hours to 10% failure rate, we only use lithium emergency batteries with substantially longer lifetimes than their nickel metal hydride or nickel cadmium counterparts and we use premium LEDs which are designed into our luminaires to offer maximum efficiency and service life with good thermal management and low operating currents.
This ensures an LED lifetime of 60,000 hours to only 10% lumen depreciation, whilst also ensuring our luminaire efficiencies are as high as the current state of the art technologies allow further reducing the carbon impact of your installation.
We constantly review our luminaire designs to ensure that we are improving efficiency and longevity to maximise the benefits to our customers and the impact our ranges have on the environment.
“We have removed nearly all single use plastics and polystyrene from our packaging. All luminaire packaging is cardboard ensuring both a minimal impact on the environment and also simplifying waste disposal on site with a single material type that is easily recycled”
For decades we have offered custom and bespoke solutions including retrofit gear trays allowing reuse of existing housings and diffusers, this has allowed hundreds of installations to be upgraded to LED with minimal waste reusing the majority of the materials already installed and substantially reduce the carbon cost of upgrading an installation whilst also reducing energy consumption.
We have removed nearly all single use plastics and polystyrene from our packaging. All luminaire packaging is cardboard ensuring both a minimal impact on the environment and also simplifying waste disposal on site with a single material type that is easily recycled.
For large projects we offer delivery in reusable wooden crates with minimal cardboard protection further reducing waste and requirement for recycling of packaging on site.
We offer a WEEE recycling services on our own lorries which are back filled with waste luminaires when returning empty from deliveries to ensure that unnecessary journeys are not made.
All recycling is carried out in our own accredited facility where plastics and metals are recovered for recycling including stripping wire to recover copper and plastic. Any hazardous non recyclable materials are disposed of safely and in accordance with all regulations.
We are very aware that despite all the work we have invested in the above, that this can only be a start and that we must take every possible step to reduce our impact on the world, reduce our emissions and improve our product offering to ensure it can be maintained and upgraded indefinitely. Our sustainable manufacturing policy goes hand in hand with our commitment to the environment and UK manufacturing.
