As part of National Green Careers Week, we are taking the opportunity to shine a light on sustainability at CBE+.
With a UK net zero target date of 2050, businesses are having to quickly adapt their ways to align with this crucial political agenda. This can be difficult, particularly for the Manufacturing Sector, which produces 20% of the world’s carbon emissions.
Sustainability and minimising environmental impact have always been at the forefront of the strategy for CBE+, and while we are pleased to be able to report significant progress over the last few years, we recognise there is still a lot to do!
At CBE+ every member of our team is accountable for making the business green. Here are some of the initiatives we have rolled out so far:
Combined Heat & Power System
CBE+ engaged with Sheffield-based Levercor Energy to design and construct and install a CHP (combined heat and power) plant at our Enterprise Drive facility in Chesterfield.
The CHP plant delivers over 90% of the site’s electrical requirements, as well as providing process heat to the electroless nickel plating production lines and also heating the workshop. This single piece of plant has displaced a large gas-fired thermal oil boiler and 10 gas space heaters. Levercor expects the business to achieve an overall carbon reduction in the region of 50% through this system.
Effluent Plant
During the rebuild of our Electroless Nickel Plating facility in early 2022, we took the opportunity to install a new, state-of-the-art, effluent treatment plant to allow us to safely treat all of our process waste. The new plant automatically filters and neutralises all waste chemistry generated on-site, allowing environmentally safe disposal.
Profit Share Incentives
We realised all the things we do at home to reduce our energy bills, for example, turning off switches and lights and closing doors, were not always common practice when it came to the workplace.
We introduced incentives in place to change the way our staff thought about energy use at work. For every £1 the business saved on energy £0.50 is put in a profit share scheme and £0.50 is reinvested back into the business. This has made us more environmentally friendly company-wide and helped us keep costs down, a necessity in today’s economic climate. Our team are now much more mindful of how they can impact energy usage on a day-to-day basis.
Easy Wins
When it comes to being environmentally friendly, there are easy steps you can take without masses of investment, to move towards our common goal of Net Zero. We installed motion sensor LED lights, which automatically turn on/off when people are in a room. We added recycling bins to our offices and canteen. We started to segregate more of our scrap materials for recycling. We introduced reusable packaging, We had a push in maintenance to fix compressed air leaks on the shop floor. We insulated more of our production process tanks. It turns out, a lot of small things make a big difference.
Operating from a single location
CBE+ is a merger of 4 once separate businesses, from 4 separate locations. Uniting the businesses and investing to relocate them to our Enterprise Drive site has massively reduced the energy we are using over the past 5 years. Offering all our services from a single location helps our customers be greener reducing packaging, transportation, inventory, and administration between multiple subcontractors.
So, over the past 5 years, we have continually strived to be as kind to our world as we possibly can. But it doesn’t stop here…
We are continually striving to reduce our environmental impact and are looking at multiple new opportunities including renewable energy and automation efficiencies.
If you are interested in working for a company that thinks green, get in touch with us.
We currently have the following vacancies:
Sales Manager – Precision Engineering.
Visit www.cbeplus.com/careers for more information.
Together we do more.