Harnessing Solar Energy to Reduce Slide’s Carbon Footprint

August 28th, 2020

To the Slide Products team, environmental stewardship goes beyond a statement of responsibility. Our commitment to the planet extends into our processes, from the energy of our facilities to the recycling of our product waste.

Last month, we installed a 47.4-kilowatt solar array on our roof. The panels, which went live on June 1, will generate almost half of our electricity needs throughout the year, reducing our carbon footprint and furthering our commitment to environmental sustainability.

Good for the Environment & Keeping Prices Down

Most solar panels use photovoltaics to capture the energy from sunlight with semiconductors. On average, each kilowatt can save a little under one ton of greenhouse gasses, such as CO2, per year. With our system, we’re saving nearly 50 tons of emissions while producing the energy our facilities need. 

In our first month of using solar energy, we generated just under 8 megawatts, saving 12,000 pounds (6 tons) of emissions – the equivalent to planting 96 trees. With our cost of electricity steadily rising by 6% per year, solar panels are not only an economical decision for our company, it’s an economical decision for the planet. 

“For us, it’s about doing the right thing and making sure we’re doing our part to help the environment,” says Slide Products President Michael Muth. “It’s also a hedge against future price hikes for electricity.”

And less overhead reduces the need to increase prices.

A Commitment to Environmentally Responsible Practices

From our energy use to our products and processes, we work to incorporate environmental sustainability into everything we do. Our products are free of trichloroethylene (TCE) and chlorinated solvents, as well as animal tissue or derivatives.

To conserve energy, we capture all chemical waste from our production warehouses, recycling this into energy that we sell back to the power company. Multiple warehouses across the country further reduce our carbon footprint by decreasing the distance our products must travel to clients.

For clients interested in partnering with us on environmental sustainability, we have a refillable cylinder program that drastically reduces waste. We also have the Slide Hazardous Aerosols Program (SHARP) to decrease hazardous waste through proper recycling and hazmat waste processing of used Slide canisters.

Solar panels are just the newest part of an ongoing commitment to environmentally responsible practices, and we encourage all organizations we serve to make a similar investment so we can work together to keep the planet healthy and safe from excessive greenhouse gas emissions – let us know if we can help.