Glencairn Crystal clear on its sustainability with nearly £2million invested into business future-proofing.
Family-owned and run Glencairn Crystal is proud to announce that the business has undertaken an extensive remodelling and future-proofing of its workshop and offices in its headquarters at East Kilbride, just outside Glasgow, Scotland.
As part of the company’s strategy to increase its level of sustainability and future-proof every aspect of its production business, Glencairn has invested nearly £2million over the past 12 months into its factory processes and solar energy programme, to ensure that as many aspects of the business as possible are sustainable and environmentally sound.
The generous investment marks a key moment for the crystal company, that is looking to become 100% dependent on its own solar energy.
Glencairn’s investment includes the following:
- Installation of an extensive Solar PV and energy storage system: the energy generated by the system will be over and above the required amount for the company to run off and be entirely independent on. Any excess electricity generated from the system will be sent back to the grid and can be repurposed for other local usage. This system has also enabled Glencairn to immediately reduce its gas usage by 30%, with the plan for this to rise to 60% over the next 12 months – eventually leading to removal of gas energy altogether over the next five years.
- Air conditioning: the installation of the Solar PV system has allowed the team to install an air conditioning system for the factory floor level for employees, thus removing the previous gas heating system, immediately reducing gas usage across the business by 30%, with this figure continually increasing over the next 12 months.
- The addition of electric car charging points in the company car park has meant that all company cars are now either fully electric or hybrid.
- Day to day office functions such as recycling and packaging have been carefully considered, with the ambition to remove the use of plastic packaging entirely over the next five years. The company works with Viridor – a scheme to collect all cardboard and paper from the site that is taken to be recycled. However, this is also under further review with the team looking to install an industrial shredding machine, enabling all cardboard waste to be shredded and used as fully recycled packaging, thus making the business self-sufficient in packaging solutions and re-use wherever possible, rather than relying on just recycling.
- A water usage programme is also in research stages, investigating how Glencairn can reduce water consumption and re-use as much as possible.
James Crilly, Purchasing Director at Glencairn Crystal commented: “Here at Glencairn, we have always embraced change and evolution as a business. Our investment in a sustainable solar PV energy system, alongside a number of key initiatives to encourage the entire company to become more instinctive in their everyday choices, is driving a step-change in the business.”
“Our ambition is to be 100% reliable on electrical energy over the next five years, whilst looking to increasingly re-use rather than just recycle: we believe this is fully achievable across the business.”