Let’s face the facts. Businesses in our industry use a lot of energy. Heavy duty motors, 3-phase electric welders, presses, brakes and heavy equipment go with the territory but use tons of energy. We understand this truth and are making efforts to reduce our energy consumption. A year ago we started exploring the possibility of installing a large photovoltaic solar array on the roof of our headquarters. To our surprise, our roof is large enough for a solar panel array that could offset 100% of our annual electricity use. We hope to have the installation complete in the next year or two.

The good news is that steel itself, and most of the metals we work with are infinitely recycleable. We work hard on a daily basis to make sure there is little wasted in our projects and any waste material is appropriately recycled.

We’ve also eliminated bottled water at our headquarters and encourage our staff to use water coolers and reusable water bottles. Our company policy is to avoid idling trucks and gas powered welding equipment any more than necessary.

If you know of an energy reducing policy or other environmentally sensible idea to consider, we’d love to hear about it.