Circularity, carbon neutrality, and human-centered design are moving from the periphery of priorities to the forefront of the design process and policy. The lighting industry has made gains
with the advent of LED lighting, but as the research shows, there is still work to do. This is exactly what lighting firm, LUMA, and its designers Christine Cornelius, Colin Johnstone, Lauren Wilcox and Sara Duffy evaluated at the onset of 2021.
LUMA’s internal Research and Development team cares about the impact of the firm’s daily actions, from the products the lighting designers are specifying to what is purchased and brought into their homes. “As designers, we want the industry we support to reflect both our individual missions and the missions of LUMA and our parent company, PAE Engineers. As we looked at the carbon impacts of lighting manufacturing, a seed was planted: How can our collective decisions create a positive impact on our planet?” Duffy shares.
With funding from an internal company grant, the team’s ambitious intent was to develop a light fixture that was fully biodegradable. “I wouldn’t say our goal was unreachable, but we quickly realized we were hyper-fixating on a band-aid solution instead of addressing the deeper issue,” Cornelius says. The team’s preliminary research illuminated the bold fact that true industry change needs to consider more than just fixture materiality.
The cleverly titled “Light on Waste” team began surveying manufacturers to gain a better understanding of the current state of the industry. The concurrent research focused on the key setbacks to sustainable lighting development: policy exclusions, minimal sustainable building standards, financial impacts, lack of life-cycle transparency and industry acceptance of construction waste.
“We wanted to better understand what standards and policies currently existed in our industry,” Johnstone notes. “We started evaluating LEED, WELL, Declare, Living Building Challenge, and Cradle to Cradle, seeing where they overlapped and where gaps lie.” In all these certifications, lighting was often exempt because of complex manufacturing and electronic components.
“The materials that make up a typical luminaire are extracted from all corners of the planet with expansive supply chains that often travel thousands of miles from their origin. The supply chain adds an extra level of emissions with materials transported via automobiles, trucks, aviation, marine and railways throughout the globe,” Cornelius explains. “Key challenges to designers and manufacturers include a lack of viable alternative materials, high-cost impacts of sustainable sourcing and minimal transparency throughout the supply chain.”
As an example, a key material in luminaire manufacturing is aluminum. It is often used for the luminaires’ housing frame, reflector, LED heat sink, hardware and more. On a typical linear fixture with an extruded aluminum housing, aluminum makes up 54 percent of the fixture weight. It is a preferred material because of its light weight, thermal conductivity, reflectance and efficient fabrication processes. Sadly, manufacturing, smelting and refinement are harmful to the environment. It is an extremely energy- intensive process and emits significant quantities of CO2 and perfluorocarbon gases. As a result, the aluminum industry alone is responsible for around 1 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Each ton of aluminum recycled avoids 9 tons of CO2 equivalent emissions.
A primary component of aluminum processing is bauxite, an aluminum-rich ore that covers 8 percent of the Earth’s surface. Bauxite mining results in negative environmental and social consequences, such as the contamination of water and local ecosystems, the destruction of land and the displacement of local communities.
Although the environmental impacts of the previously listed components are significant, there are sustainable options and alternate approaches for all the housing components of a fixture. “We’re aiming to push the industry in the direction of using 100 percent recycled aluminum, carbon- neutral steel, and recycled or biodegradable lenses,” Cornelius stresses.
Similarly, LED production requires a combination of gallium, arsenic, indium, phosphorus, aluminum, copper, lead, zinc, rare-earth elements and more. These materials are chemically combined to create unique compounds that can be used to refine the color temperature, wavelength, performance and quality of an LED light source. For example, aluminum can be added to the gallium-arsenic-compound gas to create a red-light output, and indium can be added to increase lifespan, lumen output and efficiency.
As technology develops, the chemical makeup of LEDs and other electronics change, further complicating documentation and supply of the material makeup of a light source. Because of a lack of avail- able information, manufacturers are not required to document the life cycle of their lighting components to meet most sustainability program requirements. Currently, there are no clear market alternatives to LEDs and their required electronic or material components. To create a low-waste, circular approach to lighting production, a policy-centered framework needs to be developed to encourage healthy, transparent production and holistic recycling and reuse processes.
With all that said, a sustainable lighting industry cannot focus exclusively on the fixture. It transcends beyond, taking into consideration each segment of a product’s life. The Light on Waste team viewed shipping and packaging as an extension of a fixture and considered materiality, transportation efficiency and emissions for a holistic view. “Currently, there are no universal sustainable shipping standards; shipping companies and ports approach the issue of environmentally friendly shipping in different ways. This variation in outlook can be an issue for retailers who are looking to streamline their processes in a monetarily conscious way,” Johnstone says. As consumer understanding grows, the shipping industry is no longer able to justify excessive packaging for the sake of speed and profit.
Unlike electronic components, current standard shipping materials, like plastic and polystyrene, have comparable eco-friendly alternatives. Packing peanuts and air pillows have substitutes that utilize cornstarch from agricultural waste. Cardboard boxes are being revitalized to avoid environmentally harmful inks and adhesives while being simultaneously sourced from certified and sustainably managed forests. Mushroom packaging, a non-petroleum-based filler, and biomaterial take biodegradable materiality a step further. Studies show that mycelium-based packaging is almost identical in form, function and cost to plastic with the added ability to decompose. Similarly, seaweed-based products, such as kelp bioplastics, have the added feature of absorbing CO2. It is essential to identify areas in the supply chain where harmful products can be reduced, reused or eliminated. Unfortunately, the gap lies in demand; most surveyed manufacturers are skeptical about alternative shipping materials and services.
Light on Waste originated with the idea that as stewards of the planet, it is our responsibility to create a better future for all. The enlightened goal is to create a more sustainable day-to-day design process while pushing for policy upgrades and holistic industry change. “Our goal is to educate ourselves and to connect with designers, manufacturers and creative thinkers worldwide,” Duffy says. “As consumers we have a choice: choose with longevity in mind, have conversations about waste reduction and support our Earth.”
2 Comments
Thank you for the feedback – we’re looking forward to continued research and interest like yours is very impactful! We have received manufacturer interest and our outreach produced statistics that showed positive results. 48% of manufacturers have Red List Free fixtures in the works. This doesn’t cover all aspects of a sustainable lighting industry but does point us in a great direction!
Great article! I appreciate that you dove in and identified larger issues. Have any manufacturers expressed interest in designing fixtures and helping to broaden the sustainable lighting catalogs?