Solar Powered Celebration
This month solar panels will have been in place on the roof of our West Yorkshire warehouse for a whole year.
Sharing the initiative.
We share the Victoria Works site with our sister company Interweave Textiles, a major supplier to the UK healthcare sector. Warehouse operations, logistics and the small sewing facility are managed and staffed by employees from both companies and is an important intrinsic part of our UK operations.
Last year we replaced a large part of the roof with 30,000 sq. ft. of 80mm composite insulated panels. That is 35% of the total warehouse roof structure.
By minimising heat loss, this will reduce our energy requirements significantly, and it has hugely increased the amount of natural light coming into the building!
The new strengthened roof was a perfect platform for another investment in the sustainability of our joint warehouse operations.
Last September we installed a solar panel scheme that is estimated to produce over half the energy we need to operate during the months April – August, and even in rainy West Yorkshire we will still generate power in the darker months.
This will help us reduce our carbon footprint now and in the long term, with the possibility of saving over 8 tons of CO2 emissions annually (the equivalent of over 350 trees being planted every year).
According to the eco experts, (What’s The Carbon Footprint of Solar Panels? | Eco Experts (theecoexperts.co.uk) “if solar panel owners want to make their panels carbon neutral, they’ll need to have their panels for just three years.” Additionally, as solar panels last a long time, emissions from repairs and replacements are limited.
One year on from installation, our panels are already a third of the way down the road to being carbon neutral.
Having already switched to a green energy company and installed LED lighting across all our buildings, the warehouse roof improvements and solar panels are more significant steps on our path of continual improvement!
And another step…
Last year we also made a positive commitment to reducing our carbon footprint and setting goals to help us on the road to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. We have added a further commitment to achieve Scope 1 and 2 emissions to zero by 2030. Read more in the Carbon Reduction Plan
When the figures of this year’s analysis are released, the solar panel, LED lighting and other sustainable practices should show that we are well on the way to achieving our targets.
For more information on our sustainability commitment see our Sustainability Policy
Increasing the sustainability across all areas of our business, from the environment we work in, the products we produce, to our own procurement choices, is woven into everything that we do.
At John Horsfall we are committed to sustainable, environmentally conscious business and manufacturing practices to lessen our impact on the natural world.
