Environmentally friendly streetscape lighting

Green streetscape options seem endless these days. There’s so much you can do that both improves the current look and levels of safety of your neighborhood, and helps preserve a clean, sustainable world for future generations.

Our pulse start ballasts increase energy efficiency by more than 88 percent. Even lowering light pollution through our Night Sky Friendly Luminaires is an eco-conscious act.

But the first step is using environmentally-responsible materials to build your streetscape. At Brandon Industries, here are two that we extensively use:

Recycled Aluminum

Aluminum is one of the more famous sustainable metals (as any kid with a soda can recycling business can attest), with nearly 31 percent of our nation’s aluminum coming from recycled scrap. Recycling simply involves cleaning and re-melting the metal, in lieu of the far more energy-intensive creation of new aluminum. According to the International Aluminum Institute, using recycled aluminum leads to significant cost savings, even when including hidden cost-factors like collection, separation and recycling.

We offer recycled aluminum in products like our Radarsign driver feedback signs, traffic signs, wayfinding signs and decorative mailboxes.

Powder Coat Painting

Traditional “wet” paints actually contain known VOCs — Volatile Organic Compounds — usually in the form of petroleum-based spirits that help paint air cure properly, and avoid a poor-adhesion phenomena called paint “lift.” VOCs work because the unstable compounds quickly vaporize (thus helping the paint dry), but that same property pumps toxic chemicals into the air for people to breathe.

Powder coating — used on most of our streetscape products — avoids this by eliminating the need for the VOC-laden drying solvent. Instead, it involves a free-flowing dry powder that can be more safely cured under heat.

Additionally:

• Powder coating is considered safe, and has little processing impact on the environment.
• The process has minimal waste, and over-spray is more easily recovered.
• You can clean up without chemical-laden solvents and paint washes.
• The process offers a welcome alternative to the hazardous chromium plating processes, which requires permits and extensive precautionary measures.
• It features low to zero VOC emissions, as well as low toxicity and low flammability.
• It boasts excellent corrosion and chemical resistance, which means the products lasts longer and lessens the need for energy-intensive replacements.

Contact us for more information about our eco-conscious streetscapes and products.