The Unusual business of going green

28th September 2015

Unusual Rigging is proud to announce that it is now meeting over 50% of its annual on-site power consumption with renewable energy via a solar PV system.

The 100KW solar PV system is installed on the roof of Unusual's new 1,056 sq m warehouse, which opened in June this year, and was energized on September 3.

Tom Harper, resource and sustainability manager at Unusual Rigging, explained: "This really is the icing on the cake in our drive to become a green business. Over the past few years, we have been implementing the key concepts of a circular economy - ensuring that all materials streams are efficiently managed and recycled, as well as striving to run entirely on the basis of renewable energy, mitigating negative effects on human life or our ecosystem. This implementation of the solar panels is our most recent step, and will significantly reduce our annual C02 footprint, whilst also ensuring huge cost savings over the next 20 years."

In addition to this, the entire stock of Unusual Rigging's hire products is RFID tagged, ensuring effective optimisation of asset tracking, service and repair. "This will be invaluable to us when working on major projects where we are obligated to meet specific sustainability procedures related to equipment life cycles, purer product use, packaging, recycling, extending the value of equipment through reuse and 'ecoline' service improvements, as well as proper end of life resource management for items that can no longer be used," continued Tom.

Sustainability has become an issue firmly at the heart of Unusual Rigging's company ethos. It has seen value in creating a Sustainability Manager post, and has also funded the study of the pioneering circular economy MBA with Bradford University, in collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Next on the agenda is to support the official launch of the Sustainability in Production Alliance (SiPA) at PLASA on  October 4. SiPA is a collaboration of committed organisations within the technical side of the entertainment industry, who see the necessity and the opportunity to radically transform the culture by which the industry currently operates.

"This is such an important initiative - one that businesses like ourselves cannot and should not ignore," explained Tom who, during one of three seminars to be held at PLASA, will be discussing the economic advantages of developing a circular economic approach to resource and energy.. "As a part of SiPA, we have worked to develop ten key goals, through which we will specifically support the emergence of a more sustainable approach in terms of resource and energy use. It's not going to be a quick fix - SiPA has a ten year strategy and Unusual Rigging intends to ensure the SiPA key goals are supported and developed over this time."