Andrew Paul Smith CTS, Senior Associate at the London office of Consultants Shen Milson & Wilkie looks at ways in which integrators can reduce their own environmental impact and that of their customers by asking….
BREEM, sustainability. LEED, carbon footprint, climate change, low energy, carbon neutral, re-cycling, CO2 reduction, energy efficiency – every day these terms are rammed down our throats by the media, but what does it actually mean for the AV industry? What can we do to make our system designs and installations more environmentally friendly? How can we contribute to CO2 emission reduction and help achieve a carbon balance?
There are a huge number of things we can do to help reduce the energy consumption in the AV systems we design and install but perhaps the first thing we should be asking ourselves is why do we need to do this?
In my opinion a good selection of the ‘green commentary’ currently receiving ‘airtime’ in the media is misguided and probably false. I personally don’t agree that we are only ‘three degrees from disaster’ – the climate on the Earth has been changing since the evolution of mankind and it will continue to change. Some say the Earth is getting warmer, others say its’ actually getting cooler. A current scheme to build a deep level repository for nuclear waste in the UK states that the storage facility must be ‘at least 800ft underground to prevent damage to the nuclear waste containers by the forthcoming ice age.’ So what is really happening?
The scientists, nay-sayers and environmentalists can argue all they want, but what we do know is that the earth only has a limited amount of resources. Most of our resources such as oil, gas and wood are naturally occurring and take a long period of time to form. If we expend all those resources before others have replaced it then we will simply run out of oil, gas or whatever.
So everyone should be contributing to the reduction of waste and energy consumption. But do we?
The first place to start is in your own office. Do you take any steps to switch off equipment when not in use? Do you turn off the lights in the meeting room when you leave? You don’t? Well you should. Your fuel bills only go one way so cutting your energy usage also makes good financial sense.
How much paper do you print out? Have you taken steps to reduce the amount of paper you use? Do you deliver your project documents via electronic means as opposed to hard copy? If you deliver your documents electronically, you don’t incur the cost of paper, printing and postage. So use your e-mail account and save yourself some money. And when you do have waste paper, make sure you send it to a re-cycling service rather than just dumping it for landfill.
As of 30th October 2007, all companies in the UK have to take steps to reduce their amount of waste. This came from the new government guidance on pre-treating your waste as part of the EU’s Landfill Directive.
It means that all businesses are obliged to do something to the stream of waste that's leaving their office:
It must be a physical, thermal, chemical or biological process including sorting.
It must change the characteristics of the waste.
It must do so in order to:
· reduce its volume; or
· reduce its hazardous nature; or
· facilitate its handling; or
· enhance recovery.
So, it’s now a legal requirement to sort your rubbish.
But what about the actual system we design? Well we can all make a huge difference here too.
Firstly – how much equipment are you specifying? Do you need 3 different matrix switchers? Could you use just a single, larger matrix and route all signals through it if it meets the cost constraints of the project budget?
What about power consumption? Do you look to see how much power the equipment you specify uses? Does your control system software turn off equipment not being used for that particular part of the presentation? How many times have you specified an IP enabled mains distribution unit and then wired the 240v power in the rack so that the control system can power off at the MDU, equipment that isn’t in use. It’s so easy to do, an IP enabled MDU costs just a few pounds more than a standard MDU, yet you would get the extra cost back in power savings within a year!
When selecting a projector or flat panel display, do you think about how much heat it generates when switched on? Have you ever selected a projector that meets the clients’ needs but produces less heat so that the air conditioning doesn’t have to be run so hard and therefore won’t consume so much power?
90% of the installations I have seen have no attention given to the carbon footprint of the system.
‘Ah but the client won’t pay for the additional initial costs of a low footprint system’ I hear everyone say. Well, if everyone only designed low carbon footprint systems then the client would pay. There needs to be a process of education to both the end users and within the industry as to what can so easily be done to reduce carbon emissions and make the average AV installation a much more environmentally friendly place. I’d like to see InfoComm put something on this in their CTS-D training courses, but in the meantime we all have much we can do.
Some airlines such as British Airways offer its’ passengers the chance to carbon offset their flight for an additional payment. If we paid attention to our system designs at the start of the project, we could all contribute to saving the planet.