Shades of green
18 January 2021
How green is green? Or to put it another way, how many businesses are really serious about becoming more environmentally friendly?
In a recent blog post, I mentioned the laudable green policy initiatives that have been announced by some very large organisations, outlining their on-going commitment to sustainability with clear carbon reduction targets to meet. Hopefully, they will be examples of best practice for others to emulate.
However, I’ve been talking to Andrew Fishburn, managing director of Snorkel UK, who believes that his company and many others sometimes feel they are banging against a brick wall when it comes to promoting their latest eco-friendly machines.
Snorkel is well known for its traditional lead acid equipment, its mini electric push and drive machines and its popular A38, which already tick the green energy box and are well accepted.
However, the manufacturer has recently developed a range of Compact Rough Terrain machines, namely the 2755RTE, 2770RTE, 3370RTE and 3970RTE which are available with lithium batteries, along with the Speed Level SL26E (pictured) and SL30E machines.
“These lithium machines cost a mere £1.50 to fully charge and can run for several typical shifts on sites,” said Andrew. “This can save the contractor anything up to £141 per week on fuel costs, not to mention NOx (nitrogen oxides) elimination and big reductions in noise.”
The crunch, however, is that there is understandably a cost implication. Developing such technology takes significant research and investment, making the purchase price more than for a traditional machine.
However, Andrew points out that there are subsequent reductions in fuel costs, service visits and other savings over the life of the machines.
“You can’t help thinking that some organisations view their green commitments as something of a tick-box exercise. They’ll just take a certain percentage of machines on big projects and use conventional equipment as well.
“So they meet a sufficient number of their obligations but aren’t prepared to pay an extra hire rate in the short-term for many other machines they could be using, even though they’ll save costs in the long run. That’s what a lot of hirers are telling us, at least.”
What’s your experience? Email me with your views.
