Building green

No, I’m not talking about building a LEGO model in green bricks - but reducing our carbon footprint and helping to do our bit to save the planet!

As with all businesses in Scotland, we are required to take some basic measures - such as separating our waste and recycling - but we’ve always been aware that there was much more we could do.

Back in 2019 when we decided to buy our current premises, we realised that it would be a perfect time to make a real change to our energy consumption. Working from a leased office building there is only so much that you can do!

As you might have seen from the videos that we made, whilst our 1970s building wasn’t built with energy efficiency in mind - it was certainly something that we could add. Right from the very start, we included a number of measures to both reduce our energy usage and help the environment. As you can see from the case study video we worked on with Zero Waste Scotland - it’s affected quite a few areas of the business!

Running an EV was the first change that we could take and we’re proud to say that we’ve not bought any petrol for over 5 years now! Although the number of deliveries we can make in a car is limited, we try to make as many as we can. The furthest so far have been deliveries to both Hamburg and Copenhagen - who said electric cars can’t make long journeys! We’re also well aware that an EV is only as clean as the electricity it consumes - so we make sure to buy all of our grid power from 100% renewable sources.

The view from our roof during renovations

First on the list for our new building was of course, insulation. Renovating a 50 year old building is far better for the environment than a new build - but it was never built with energy efficiency in mind! Some of the steps we could take were simple, such as installing new loft insulation.

Some of them were more complex . We have replaced the roof above our main studio area, increasing the insulation and reducing the heat losses. We have also upgraded the old plastic , single-glazed roof lights to modern double glazed units meant that every door and window had double glazed glass (at last!)

As we moved into the building, we also had to decide on heat, light and power. Some of the highest running costs of any business after salaries. Faced with an outdated boiler and radiators that had certainly seen better days - we decided to move our heating to be fully electric. We had hoped to install an air source heat pump, but sadly the building just wasn’t airtight enough. We decided in the end, to go to individual electric heaters. These are cheaper to install - but if we weren’t careful we could be wasting much more energy over the long term. After doing our research, we decided on smart heaters that automatically turn themselves on and off, based upon the occupation of the room. As with everything else in the building, we can even log in remotely and check what’s happening on a room by room basis.

It’s fair to say that old Police stations aren’t known for their impressive lighting… this needed upgrading. Replacing every light fitting with a low-energy LED panel made an enormous difference not just to our bills - but also to the quality of the light, which is very important for model making. Each room can be individually controlled and dimmed - plus all of the common area lights are controlled by motion sensors. No chance of leaving the lights on!

Our wildflower garden

We didn’t stop at the walls either. Teresa has been turning her fingers green, turning a rather neglected area of lawn into a wildflower garden just outside the building. It’s attracted bees, butterflies and many other pollinators (as well as onlookers!) throughout the whole summer, and it’s still going strong. It’s amazing how much of a difference looking at flowers can make to your day.

In fact, as I sit at my desk right now, I’m looking at the flowers and also the plans for one of the first solutions we considered - Solar panels. From the very start we’d always intended on installing solar panels to create our own electricity and reduce our reliance on the grid. Whilst Scotland isn’t the sunniest place on earth - solar panels are still a good option here and we are expecting to provide most of our own power from the roof. The pandemic put our plans back, but with luck, we’ll have these in place by Christmas this year which should mean our plans are nearly complete.

What’s left? Well, at some point we will look to replace our vans with electric equivalents. So far this is the hardest challenge. Whilst the infrastructure is in place, very large vans such as ours have yet to go electric in a big way. We’re also very conscious that both vans still have a lot of life left in them, and that we should get the best use we can out of the carbon that went into creating.

Of course, as a customer - you might be wondering what extra cost all of these measures are adding? Well, setting aside the environmental cost of not doing anything - we’ve actually brought all of these measures in without increasing our overheads. Thanks to government funding, we’ve been able to borrow against the savings that each of the measures will cost. In the long run - each measure will actually reduce our overheads. Saving money, saving carbon and saving the planet, just an extra little bit.