As a responsible steward of our earth’s natural resources, Class Plastics is proud of our achievements in minimizing our carbon footprint and improving environmental outcomes for all.
Carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions, specifically carbon dioxide, of a given activity. Throughout the years, it has been an important measure of the environmental impact of manufacturing businesses like Class Plastics.
As a leading manufacturer of rigid plastic containers in Australia, minimizing our carbon footprint is more of a thorough discipline than any other business process. We’ve already made a number of significant investments to conserve energy and we are constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to reduce our carbon footprint even more to improve environmental outcomes for all.
When Less Means More
Class Plastics containers are made of superior quality resin that has a very high elastic component and enables us to manufacture our containers with less raw material and still deliver the same strength and performance of our containers. This also equates to minimizing our energy usage per unit as well as savings on our raw materials.
Solar Energy Use
20% of our power consumption comes from solar energy. Our 1352 solar panels produce 365 kilowatts of energy and reduce 530 tonnes of our carbon footprint per annum. On average, this amount of solar energy can power up to around 90 – 94 households. This significant investment helped us to achieve 20% savings on our overall energy consumption from non-renewable resources.
We are also continuously engaged in specialised contracts and energy audits to process improvements in our manufacturing and highlight opportunities in waste management and energy re-consumption.
Full Electric Machinery
Consuming less oil in our manufacturing process by way of full electric machinery is something that we are looking to implement in the next 12 months. This technique will further lessen our energy usage to produce our containers by 30% – 40%. This trend is now being used across Europe and Class Plastics aims to be the leader in this technology in Australia.
Automation and the Future
At Class Plastics, we always strive for automation of repetitive processes where possible. Class Plastics believe that automating as many of our processes as possible will be beneficial to both the society and the environment.
In the future, we aim to have a full electric refinery that will use less oil and lubricants, thereby using a lot less power. We are also looking at eliminating our cooling tower to lessen our water consumption from 1500 litres to 500 litres per day.
Our significant investments towards a healthier and greener planet proved to have made a positive impact on the efficiency and sustainability of our manufacturing operations, as well as on our commitment to be a conscientious citizen and a responsible steward of the environment.
If you’re in a business that relies on quality plastic and environmentally friendly containers to maintain your trading reputation, talk to us.
