Personal Blog of Ellen MacArthur

We spent an interesting day in Derby earlier this week visiting some of E.ON’s clients in Derbyshire to see how they manage their energy and resources. Our visits included Inspirepac, Derby City Council and Debenhams.

Our first visit was to Inspirepac, a cardboard packaging manufacturer where Group Managing Director Chris Marples and his team showed us how they are working on reducing their impact on the environment, and whilst they openly say they are only just scratching the surface they have reduced their energy usage by 7% whilst growing the business by 15%. There were also small things that you can see and feel around their business like all the offcuts and waste cardboard going back in the same lorry which supplies them to be recycled, the man who comes in to repair the pallets rather than throwing them away and buying new ones, the new printing machine which uses water based inks, the change of electricity supply which will save £18K per year and use less energy as a more refined system. There is a real will to change things, a real will to be thinking about ideas – and things are happening which was great.

At Debenhams we were able to meet with Nigel Palmer, Retail Operations Manager, who won a personal achievement award recently the EEAS awards ceremony (See earlier blog). He and Energy Manager Alan Carter talked through their changes across their stores to reduce energy consumption. Debenhams seem to be doing things consistently and quietly and continue to make significant savings on their energy. They have different types of stores dating, I believe, from around the 1700s so they have a range of challenges, but are looking at cases separately and trying to make a difference across the board. It’s nice that the customer need not know in many ways, as their experience as a shopper does not change. This makes sense too – as a reduction in energy usage so often ends up with a financial saving for the company.

Derby City Council were interesting as they have big plans for Derby, they talked of a proposed hydro system in the River Derwent which runs by the offices and would power the huge main council building. Measures taken have to be sensible, especially as they are due a refit to the building. It will be interesting to see how an old building on such a large scale can become more energy efficient. They showed us a green box they put in under their municipal swimming pool that lowers the mains voltage from 240 to 220. Incredibly it reduced energy consumption there by just under 10 percent, but in one of their carparks fitting one has reduced energy by 30%! Just like that.

There are these technologies available, and many are new to the market – but simple solutions such as this ‘green box’ voltage converter really do work, and there was a graph there to prove it!