HARBEC is striving to be a "Carbon Neutral" company

In an attempt to move beyond the lack of common understanding of what "being green" means from one company to another, HARBEC is currently assessing its Carbon Foot Print in order to become a Carbon Neutral manufacturing company. We can show you the benefits of choosing HARBEC and the positive impact it has on the environment.

What does carbon neutral mean to us? Basically, we don't want our energy use to add greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. After we have tried every way possible to do everything possible to remove or omit it directly ourselves, we'll take out the same amount somewhere else by purchasing carbon credits towards renewable energy, energy efficiency or from environmental projects like reforestation.

What is HARBEC doing to reduce CO2 emissions?

• CHP - Combined Heat and Power
• Sustainable building elements

  • Daylight Gathering: using natural light resources to replace electric lighting during daylight hours
  • Double Insulated walls and roof
  • In-floor Radiant Heating
• Renewable energy
• Manufacturing equipment choices and modifications

  • All-electric injection molding machines
  • Use of waste heat
  • More efficient motor starting
• Lighting System upgrade: High efficiency: fixtures, ballasts, and sensors
• 100% 'Green' vehicle fleet
• Water management alternative:

  • Bi-metallic water treatment plant requires no chemicals
• Process water tempering system

What will HARBEC be doing in the future?Additional future potentials being considered or implemented include Biodiesel fuel production, Aquaponics, wood or crop drying, ice and snow management, community heating etc. as added opportunities for using additional thermal resources that are currently being wasted. Through resourcefulness and proper prioritizing we hope these and others not yet realized will help us continue to grow our business while reducing our environmental foot print.

What does it mean to “offset” the CO2 emissions? We can lower the CO2 emissions we are responsible for by doing things like driving less, recycling, using renewable energy, and buying products like compact fluorescent bulbs. However, it is virtually impossible to reduce our CO2 output to 0. That’s where “carbon offsetting” comes in. Offsetting allows an individual, business, or organization to lower CO2 emissions in another location by an amount equivalent to those in which we create. How is this possible? Organizations sell carbon offsets and use the proceeds to support high-quality renewable energy, energy efficiency, and reforestation projects, which all result in lowering CO2 emissions in other locations.

Carbon offsetting is the act of mitigating ("offsetting") greenhouse gas emissions.

Some carbon offset methods-

• tree planting

• renewable energy

• energy conservation

• methane capture offsets

Carbon footprint is a measure of the exclusive global amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases emitted by a human activity or accumulated over the full life cycle of a product or service (see Wiedmann and Minx, 2008). Calculate your own carbon footprint at stopglobalwarming.org or climatecrisis.net.

Working to be a carbon neutral company.
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