The company’s site in Leeds achieved a milestone in corporate governance sustainability last year under the guidance of EHS Manager Luke Wood. LED lighting was installed in the buildings, reducing the site's electricity consumption and carbon emissions, an old heating system was replaced with a modern direct heating system and a 100% circular waste management concept was implemented.
The new lighting system not only makes the workplace brighter and more comfortable, it uses less electricity – annual consumption dropped from 915,464 kWh to the current level of 660,189 kWh. In other words, the amount of energy consumed at the site for lighting was reduced by 27% and the associated carbon emissions were reduced by 89 tons.
The new direct heating system represents a significant part of the site’s sustainability achievements last year, having reduced the site's annual carbon emissions by 353 tons and saving almost 2 million kWh of gas a year.
Together with waste management specialist ACM Environmental PLC, Luke mapped out the “zero waste to landfill” project, which has made Leeds one of the first SFS sites where 100% of waste is either recycled or used to produce electricity. Under this project, a total of 59.8 tons of waste are recycled and 1.8 tons of non-recyclable waste are turned into electricity, which is enough to power five households for a year.
In addition to the UK site, the Swiss production sites are turning to climate-neutral electricity to meet their future power requirements: SFS will generate about 8.5% of the electricity it needs for its Swiss manufacturing sites through the significant expansion of the existing photovoltaic power system at its headquarters in Heerbrugg (CH). The installation was completed at the end of 2020 and it is one of the largest photovoltaic systems in eastern Switzerland with a maximum output of 4,000 kWp (kilowatts peak). The additional electricity SFS requires will be sourced from hydroelectric power plants as of 2021, and SFS has also pledged to draw electricity from exclusively climate-neutral sources for all of its production sites in Switzerland from then on.
With the help of CEE (an energy savings scheme created by lawmakers in 2005 with the aim of significantly reducing energy consumption in manufacturing sectors), the site in Valence invested in efficiency improvements in 2020 and reduced its total greenhouse gas emissions by doing so. New, more efficient compressors were installed and their waste heat is now recovered and used for the site's hot water network. These investments help the Valence site to protect the environment while significantly lowering water heating costs.
