Micaela Abbott, Sales Director at Megaman UK, looks at the company’s current sustainability practices as well as its plan for the coming years.
Megaman has always been committed to manufacturing exclusively low-energy lighting products, ever since its inception almost 30 years ago. In the early 1990s, Megaman led the way with the introduction of the first compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and has been at the forefront of LED technology in the years since.
More recently, the focus at Megaman has been the consolidation of our product range in order to provide only the most energy efficient, flexible and adaptable solutions to everyday lighting applications – responding to the needs of both our wholesalers and their customers. Our current fixture ranges, Performa and Essentials, are the result of that work and provide adaptable, feature rich solutions as well as everyday essential lighting products. Both these ranges have energy efficient LED technology at their core; but we know that it’s not just about the sustainability of our products once installed. The processes we have in place during our products’ development are also crucial, and we are proud of the steps we are taking to become a more sustainable and socially responsible company.
Sustainable development and delivery
All Megaman products are developed at our manufacturing facilities in Hong Kong to ISO9001 where continuous research and development – backed by more than 1,000 R&D staff – continues daily, using an industry leading energy efficiency testing laboratory.
At these facilities we are pleased to hold the ISO14001 certification for environmental management which requires a rigorous and comprehensive audit focused on a number of areas including waste reduction, sustainable practices, legislative awareness, employee engagement and a proactive management of environmental issues.
Closer to home at our UK headquarters in Welwyn Garden City, our warehouse staff operate a zero-waste policy, with all products arriving to the UK on recyclable cardboard palettes which we then reuse – along with any shrink wrap – when sending products on to our wholesalers and distributors around the country.
We also do what we can to cut our energy consumption, including updating our own lighting as and when more energy efficient options become available. In the last 12 months we installed our own GEO 2 high bay from the Performa range. Crucially, this product offers multiple wattage/lumen outputs and is compatible with a microwave motion sensor – like many products in our range – so that it can be set to dim or turn off completely following a period of inactivity. This alone has cut the energy consumption of our entire headquarters (warehouse and offices) by a third, and positively impacted our CO2 emissions.
Looking to the future
As we look towards the next 30 years, we believe that we have a responsibility to keep innovating for our customers and we want to continue to be at the cutting-edge when it comes to energy efficiency.
However, our next step will be around reducing waste and the sustainability of our products as we are currently working to adapt our fixture range so that the LED module inside can be replaced, and the housing can continue to be used. Importantly, this needs to be possible without impacting the slimline, lightweight nature of our product range or any of the products’ ability to be retrofitted into the place of existing integrated fixture.
We are also currently working towards achieving one of leading business sustainability ratings so that we can provide the utmost transparency to our customers in terms of our sustainability credentials and practices within Hong Kong and the UK. Plus, we are looking to expand our community outreach by engaging more closely with charities close to our hearts in Welwyn Garden City and around the country.
On this path we hope that we can build on the benefits of our highly efficient lighting solutions, to help both our planet and our communities in the future.
For more information on the Performa and Essentials fixture ranges, please click here
