Thorlux Lighting says that recycled powder from the spray-painting line at its factory in Redditch, Worcestershire has to used to coat over 393,000 individual components for 103 different product types.
Despite the high efficiency of the powder-coating process, a small amount of paint ends up as waste.
Since 2024, the waste powder is collected and reused, stopping it from going to landfill. To date, over 8.5 tonnes of recycled powder coat, which would otherwise have gone to waste, has been reused.
As the paint plant applies a variety of finishes to products from across the Thorlux range, the collected powder is a mix of colours. For this reason, Thorlux only uses leftover paint to coat non-visible parts of the luminaire, such as internal components or gear trays. The resulting finish, which usually appears a speckled grey, still matches the ‘pure’ powder-coat in terms of quality and protection. The parts are also labelled on assembly to explain the process to users.
Thorlux engineers are looking at increasing the variety of components painted this way to push the use of reclaimed powder coat even further.
Other sustainability measures adopted by the brand include an extensive which solar installation came online in 2019 and supplied around 225,000 kWh of electricity yearly.
Thorlux considerably expanded the solar grid in 2023; it now delivers an 1 million kWh annually from 3,138 photovoltaic panels.
This electricity helps power the plant and equipment and charge the company’s fleet of hybrid and electric vehicles.
On days with lower demand, Thorlux feeds excess energy captured into the national grid.
On good weather days, the whole site can be powered just from the PV system. The company says that over its anticipated 25-year operational lifetime, the solar PV system will avoid the creation of approximately 4856 tonnes of carbon through reduced consumption.
Thorlux uses fully recycled, biodegradable, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified cardboard for its luminaires. Card offcuts are baled and recycled.
Additionally, paper-based packing tape is used instead of vinyl.
More recently, the company has been piloting a cardboard recycling scheme for its luminaire packaging. So far, over 10 tonnes of cardboard have been returned, which has been reused or recycled through waste management partners.
Thorlux has moved to digital installation guides, saving over 1.3 million sheets of paper yearly – equivalent to 131 trees. Contractors can access installation information for the luminaire and the lighting control system by scanning a QR code on either the packaging or the product.
• Thorlux Lighting is supporting this year’s Circular Lighting Live 2026, Recolight’s flagship conference and exhibition, which takes place on Thursday 8 October 2025 at the Minster Building in the City of London. Free to specifiers, Circular Lighting Live 2025 will feature leading experts, specifiers and policy makers who will share their insights into forthcoming standards and legislation, emerging technologies and new business models.
