that did, much of the value in the light fi tting was literally shredded, to recover just the metals, which themselves would need energy inputs to melt them down for reuse. Green? No. Recycling in lighting takes the problem off your hands, but it doesn’t fi x it.
Our old method of resource usage under the typical economic model has been referred to as take (resources from the environment), make (products in factories), waste (dispose of products into the natural environment). As Dr Mark Carney, the former head of the Bank of England, asked in his recent BBC Reith Lecture: ‘Why do fi nancial markets rate Amazon as one of the world’s most valuable companies, but the value of the Amazon appears in no ledger until it’s stripped of its foliage and converted into farmland’. We can pose a similarly awkward question in retail
lighting. T e day before Arcadia group closed its stores, its high-quality track spots were delivering a valuable service – after all, most of us shop with our eyes, so appropriate lighting is a given for retail success. So why, on the day after, did those same fi ttings become scrap? T ey had good, valuable life left in them, all we lacked was the commercial infrastructure to exploit that. Stop and think of where new light fi ttings come from. Let us assume the Far East. A light fi tting’s in-use CO2
is
‘The retail sector, with its preponderance of track, should be the early adopter for practical reasons as well as its high churn rate of equipment’
considerably higher in percentage terms than the CO2 embodied in its manufacture, but it’s all measurable,
especially if you have to mine and smelt the aluminium and the casting machines were powered by coal-fi red generation. Some of the elements in LEDs and electronics might be in limited or at-risk supply (the EU describes these as ‘critical raw materials’). Some, for example cobalt or tantalum, can be confl ict minerals. T e circular economy is about keeping products at their highest value for as long as possible – in our case keeping a light fi tting as a light fi tting by a process of good product design, product quality, and serviceable and upgradeable components. If a store changes, lights shouldn’t be thrown in a skip.
Luminaires should be able to be repurposed, reused or remanufactured and this requires not just product design changes but an ecosystem of supporting services – more green jobs, but this time locally based green jobs. T ings are changing, fi rst slowly and now more rapidly.
T e UK government’s industrial strategy has confi rmed ambitions to double resource productivity and to eliminate avoidable waste by 2050. T e European Union’s Single Lighting Directive (adopted by the UK government) requires the replaceability of light sources and separate
VERSACE, MIAMI, BY CURIOSITY
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