Actions on Resource Conservation
We have an excellent track record in the environment, helping bring benefits to some of the world’s biggest businesses by reducing customers’ power and water consumption, treating hazardous waste and remanufacturing used pumps.
Our ability to remanufacture is a compelling environmental success story. You couldn’t imagine the car industry able to offer complete recycling, but that’s what has happened in the world of vacuum pumps. We are now the global leader of recycling pumps and remanufacturing is a significant part of Edwards service business.
Remanufacturing & Service
After use many Edwards products are contaminated with hazardous process by-products, and - if disposed of - would need to be treated as hazardous waste.
A global network of service and remanufacturing facilities which safely decontaminate and remanufacture over 35,000 used vacuum pumps a year. Most vacuum pumps run 24/7 and are re-used 4-10 times over a 10-20 year lifetime. That’s equivalent to a car travelling around 2 million miles!
Remanufacture typically involves the reuse of over 90% by weight of a pump’s components – with a corresponding saving in raw materials and their embodied carbon dioxide. In Europe we offer a free recycling service for gauges and controllers.
Energy Efficiency Upgrades
Our latest generation energy efficient products not only offer energy savings, reduced utilities consumption and reduced carbon emissions, but also potentially offer future-proofing against carbon taxes.
We enable customers running older generation pumping and abatement products to benefit from these features with our upgrade programs, which include the responsible recycling of upgraded products returned to us through our remanufacturing operations.
Reducing Our Emissions
Organic solvents containing Volatile Organic Compounds are a major source of pollution in the lower atmosphere and especially in built-up areas where respiratory problems can be caused.
Water based cleaning has eliminated the use of solvents in our production and remanufacturing processes. In addition, the use of closed-loop recirculating water systems in our remanufacturing facilities reduces their water consumption by more than 90%.
Reduced Hazardous Material Content
There is a growing amount of legislation around the world (for example EU RoHS Directive*) to eliminate trace levels of heavy metals from electronic products, as these have the potential to leach out of landfill sites and Edwards products comply with these requirements. Information on RoHS compliance of Edwards products can be found on the product section of our website.
Reducing Waste
As part of our management systems, our environmental policy incorporates a number of initiatives to minimize unnecessary waste. For a number of years we have been implementing a successful recycling policy as part of our active company policy on reducing landfill waste.