As a family, we care about the state of our planet. We’re doing our best to educate our kids about what happens to the things we throw away, and how the choices we make affect the world. At home we have a compost bin and a worm farm, and we do what we can to reduce our waste and to reuse what we can before it goes in the general waste or recycling bin.
Are we doing as much as we could be? Definitely not. But it’s a start!
As a business, we are much the same. We don’t have a nice glossy environmental policy. But we do care, and we’re doing our best to be an eco friendly electrician. In my research for this blog post I discovered that about 3 million tonnes of construction and demolition debris goes into New Zealand landfills and cleanfills every year.
It’s overwhelming, and as a small business we know we can’t change the world. But we’re determined to do our bit.
Every year, New Zealand industries and households discard over 3 million tonnes of construction and demolition debris to landfills and cleanfills.
What we're already doing:
- We recycle our scrap metal – that’s all the old cable that needs to be disposed of, and any metal parts from light fittings that we remove
- We recycle the cardboard packaging from any products that we supply
- We recycle old CFL lightbulbs and fluoro tubes that we remove – these are hazardous and it’s important that they are safely disposed of
- We recycle our used batteries
There's more to do, of course
As a company we can still do a lot more to minimise our environmental impact, and we’re working on this, alongside the day-to-day demands of our business and our young family.
This year I’d like to tackle those big, bulky plastic spools that all of our cable are supplied on. They don’t take much wear – by the time we’ve finished with them they still look like new. But our supplier doesn’t accept them back, and unfortunately they can’t be recycled in the kerbside collection. My goal is to find an electrical wholesaler who is willing to take the spools back for reuse, or, if I can’t find that, then to find a recycling option.
Also on my agenda is our soft plastic waste. The supermarket soft plastic recycling scheme is sometimes running, sometimes not, and the receptacle is often too full to take any more – we really need a commercial option.
You can help, too
A key contributor to waste in the electrical industry is a market flooded with poor quality imported electrical fittings. Time and time again, Ben is called out to replace junky switchgear, powerpoints and light fittings in relatively ‘new’ homes, that have been outfitted by sparkies engaged in bidding wars to secure their contracts.
It keeps us in business, I suppose, but it’s not exactly a planet-friendly strategy.
That’s one of the reasons why we always recommend good quality gear to our customers. Ben’s been in the industry for 20+ years, now, and time has taught him that the poor quality gear just simply isn’t worth it. (And I won’t pretend there’s nothing in it for us – we prefer to avoid those warranty callbacks!)
So you can help us minimise our waste by choosing products that are built to last. Good quality products don’t have to be expensive, either. Please ask us – we’d love to advise on quality options to suit your budget.
