Environment and global warming are very important for Carcomm Coachworks Ltd. We regularly look at ways to reduce commercial waste and the level of impact that our operations produce.

To date we have implemented several initiatives to support our goal of becoming more carbon neutral.

Some of the biggest initiatives include:

Solar panels on the roof of our workshop (all 40,000 sq ft of it)

We installed the 600 solar panels on the roof of our workshop in 2015. Since then, they have generated over 800,000 kilowatt hours of electricity.

Perhaps one of the biggest benefit of having the space for so many solar panels is that they have reduced our energy bills by 50% since their installation and have now completely paid for themselves.

Lighting

Good lighting is very important in our line of work, especially as there is little natural light in the workshop. We’ve switched to LED light bulbs throughout the workshop and our offices, and we have installed motion sensors in the areas that don’t need to be lit all of the time to ensure we are not wasting any energy.

Paint recycling

As commercial vehicle refurbishment and respray specialists, most of the vehicles that come to Carcomm Coachworks Ltd require colour matching.

We use water-based paint and extra high solid paint systems rather than the typical high solvent-based systems, again significantly reducing the amount of VOC’s (Volatile organic compound) produced.

To further reduce what might typically end up in landfill, we extract the solvent out (the volatile organic compound within paint) and re-use that as spray gun cleaning thinners.

Electric Vehicle charging points

Becoming fully certified to deal with Electric Vehicle (EV) repair and refurbishment earlier this year, has meant that we now look after many of the EV fleets.

Having the charging points on site, has enabled us to charge up the Electric Vehicles so we can test them fully before returning them to their owner.

Being able to charge these vehicles up, also means we can even take them out for a road test to ensure they operate correctly and are safe to reuse on the road.

Waste recycling

We recycle all our other waste, such as card, aerosol cans, sealer tubes and metal.

Even our tyres go to Feltham Tyres (local tyre specialists), who then recycle them as playground equipment and for football pitches.

Green Vehicle Parts

We encourage the use of green vehicle parts for many of our customers, which are recognised as not just to be more affordable, but environmentally friendly too.

Green vehicle parts are reusable parts of end-of-life and written-off vehicles, which are routinely reclaimed during the dismantling process.

Invested in a Cloud based internal system

Upgrading to Office 365 we now use a lot less paper forms and documents.

Watch this space for more updates!