‘We’ll only specify lights with environment certs’ – Arup UK chief

Arfon Davies, UK Lighting Design Director at Arup, talks to Circular Lighting Report editor Ray Molony about the practice’s sustainability and circularity strategy.
It extends to challenging clients about the fundamentals of the project itself and asking them to consider reuse and refurbishment as a starting point. For the past year, Arup has been asking manufacturers to provide environmental product declarations for their products as well as the circularity measure, TM66.

“I want to be in a position where we can just make choices according to whether the products are environmentally suitable and apply circular economy principles. At the moment, that’s quite tricky because it would severely limit the number of products that we could look at for projects. But that’s where I want us to be: making decisions purely on the basis of the environmental impact and the circularity of products. We need the industry to move forward quickly, actually, to help us do that, not just at Arup but the industry generally.”

“Every single one of our projects now, we carry out whole life cycle carbon assessments.
It’s not an option anymore, it’s mandatory.”