Reuse of lights at hospital saves 40 trees

The reuse of luminaires at a hospital in Ipswich has saved the equivalent of almost a tonne of carbon dioxide, or 40 mature oak trees.

CBRE’s maintenance team at Nuffield Health Ipswich Hospital faced failing fluorescent bedhead lights – but replacing them entirely would have been costly and disruptive.

Instead, Suffolk-based Light Years Ahead, the original manufacturers of the Rotalux luminaires installed 25 years ago, took on the challenge to remanufacture the 40 luminaires.

‘The chance of finding the original company, still going strong – and just down the road in Suffolk – was unbelievable,’ said facilities manager, Michael Tubby.

Part of the problem that Nuffield Health had were that the controls for the luminaires integrate with the internal nurse call system which runs into the walls and they were operated via a handheld control which had on/off switch, a dimmer, and the nurse call button.

Simply installing a new dimmable bedhead light would not only be costly, but also require significant electrical work, including chasing new wiring into the walls. There would also be a need for new controls for the light, but this would then leave most of the buttons on the existing control redundant without simultaneously installing a new nurse call system.

Light Years Ahead reused the existing body, lens and a significant amount of the wiring, disposing of the fluorescent electronics and lamp itself to replace with a modern driver and LED array. This all fit within the original casing and would mate to the click-in brackets that were already on the wall to retain the original controls.

Light Years Ahead conducted a TM65 study on simply replacing the lights against retrofitting. This looked at overall lifetime carbon output of creating a product versus retrofitting or refurbishing, and from this it determined that 23kgCO2e is saved per light. By retrofitting 40 fittings, the hospital has saved approximately 920kg CO₂e.

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