Sustainability

Our Environmental Impact

We are aware of our environmental impact as a business and have taken, and continue to take, appropriate steps to mitigate that impact. This includes setting environmental objectives and targets, implementing procedures and providing training so employees and contractors understand their environmental responsibilities and can seek to improve our environmental performance.

Recently, we have undertaken an embodied carbon assessment of our Black Start system and a business carbon assessment to give us a total carbon footprint with carbon neutral targets. PB Design is part of a carbon consortium group that discusses, with other businesses, carbon footprint reduction ideas and opportunities to achieve net zero.

Sustainability with Black Start

Our Investment in the Carbon Reduction Journey

  • Reduced plastics and other non-recyclable material in our packaging.
  • Reuse packaging where we can by working with our supply chain.
  • Invested in 83kW of solar panels in 2016 with a further investment in 2022 of 75kW.
  • Installed 44kW of battery storage in 2023.
  • Improved insulation of our factory during the refurbishment in 2016 and again in 2022.
  • Installed LED lighting throughout the offices and factory.
  • Removed “wet” heating throughout all offices, replaced by electric heating to make use of our solar generation.
  • Source from local UK based suppliers, where possible, to reduce our carbon footprint.
  • Reduced our pickup from 5 days per week to 3 days per week to reduce our carbon footprint.
  • Since lockdown, continued with hybrid work from home, further reducing our commuter miles.
  • Installed four EV charging points.
  • Recycling batteries, which forms a large part of our portfolio.

 

Sustainable Developments Goals

As part of our further development, we have undergone an ESG project with a third party specialist which gives us an up to date carbon footprint report. To make full use of energy from our solar generation, we are looking to upgrade to electric heating throughout our factory and use thermal solar panels for hot water, with the aim to reduce our gas consumption and achieve gold standard carbon offsetting. We are committed to achieving NetZero by 2030.

Sustainable Future

Through innovative product design we have also reduced the embedded carbon within our products and will continue to invest in R&D to reduce this further.