In 2014 Ashby Installed Solar Panels to Offset it's Carbon Footprint

Since 2014 Ashby has been offsetting it's energy consumption with 350 solar panels, installed on our factory roof, providing 576 square metres of active solar generation. This investment in sustainability gives us an annual reduction in our carbon footprint of nearly 45 tonnes*! The panels also seem to provide an agreeable home to a local flock of pigeons...*This figure is based on offsetting grid displaced electricity at 0.529Kg/kWh per annum

A large stock holding of aluminium. Aluminium is Infinitely Recyclable and Our Preferred Sign Material of Choice

Aluminium is our primary and preferred material of choice for sign manufacture. In pure environmental terms: it's lightweight, durable, and near infinitely recyclable. We source our aluminium from billet from plants powered by hydro-electric generation. So while aluminium it has a high energy cost from a primary production perspective (Refining and Smelting), it requires a mere 5% of that energy to recycle. And those energy savings remain intact indefinitely, as aluminium is unchanged by the recycling process - no degradation to the metal, no need for additional chemical processes - no matter how many times it gets recycled. What you get out is what you put in. All our extruded aluminium products now contain at least 20% recycled material. As a further part of our waste reduction efforts, our bespoke software applies production-planning expertise to maximise our material efficiency. We recycle 100% of our waste aluminium.We do, of course, offer composite aluminium sheet as a substrate for our signage and we have chosen suppliers who have a proven track record on both recycling and the use of recycled materials in it's production - what is often referred to as a 'closed loop' manufacturing process. We store our off-cuts of composite materials and acrylics on-site for monthly collection and transfer to their respective recycling facilities.

Ashby has Reduced it's Use of Energy Intensive Cloud Computing

Reducing energy consumption is something we're all very used to hearing about in the domestic realm, but many of those very same steps can, and should, be applied to a business. So that is precisely what we have done.<ul><li>Something that is commonly overlooked is IT infrastructure. Cloud storage and computing solutions are everywhere, built into most devices and programmes we all interact with daily, and heavily marketed for. The unfortunate reality is that cloud storage represents an energy use increase over local storage. Our solution is to maintain a local file storage system for things being worked on in the short to medium term and to store completed or outdated projects in 'cold storage' - an incredibly hi-tech solution of placing a hard drive in a safe! In the interests of transparency we will own up to using cloud services, but it's use is limited to sensitive information and our ERP. With the best will in the world we cannot compete with the increased security cloud services offer; we have fended off hackers before and that's not a position we want to be in again!</li><li>In early 2018 we re-fitted the factory lighting with a new suite of high bay LED's. This project initially reduced our energy use on illumination by a, frankly astonishing 51%, that's over 14,000 kg of CO2 NOT produced. Buoyed by this, we then took it a step further and fitted motion sensors to the areas of our factory with low-footfall, keeping our storage racking dark and carbon neutral until it's picking time.</li></ul>Reducing our energy consumption is something we take seriously and it's a subject we regularly review to ensure we are taking effective action.

Ashby is Reducing it's Reliance on Polystyrene Packaging

This is what our despatch area used to look like. It was high time we moved on!In recent years we have been moving away from the use of polystyrene to package our goods. Polystyrene is a very lightweight and effective packaging material, but it's negative environmental impact is undeniable: the stuff just doesn't go away. In 2021 we began investing in new packaging equipment and materials in an effort to move on from polystyrene. We're currently in the planning stages for further upgrades to our packing line with the intention of increasing the use of recycled and recyclable materials.In conjunction with this we have been reducing our reliance on overnight carriers to transport our goods, opting instead to use smaller courier vans as often as possible. This allows us to use significantly less packaging overall, what internally we refer to as light-wrapping, as well as our goods travelling direct to where they need to be, and not via disparate hubs and circular lorry routes.

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