Barco. Your relentless partner in control room sustainability
SUSTAINABILITY - CONTROL ROOM 4 min read
This week, we have been shining our (eco-friendly LED) lights on sustainability in the control room. Now it’s time to take a look at ourselves and evaluate how we tackle sustainability at Barco. After all, you can’t talk the talk if you don’t walk the walk. Are we a true ‘sustainable partner’? How do we prove this to our customers? In this article, we answer these questions.
The sustainability strategy of Barco consists of 3 pillars: Planet, People and Communities. You can find all the information and insights about this strategy on the dedicated sustainability section of our website. As it doesn’t make much sense to repeat this in this article, we will focus on Barco’s control room-related efforts.
Ecoscoring: the ultimate motivator
Because there is no standard tool to determine the complete sustainable performance of all of Barco’s products, we needed to create one ourselves – and had it validated by external consultants.
“Next to the obvious Energy efficiency, we also evaluate the use of (potentially) hazardous Materials, the sustainable performance of Packaging and Logistics, and the Total Lifecycle considerations (reusability and reducing the use of non-recyclable materials),” says Dries Vanneste, Sustainability Manager at Barco. “Products that score high on all these criteria are marked with the ‘Barco Eco Product label’. In this way, the Ecoscore clearly shows the added value of our products for customers.”
The ecoscore however also has another important result. “The increased awareness of sustainable performance has also an effect on the R&D teams,” says Jan Daem, Product Compliance Manager at Barco. “By having these concrete goals to strive for, we see a lot of motivation and determination in the development team to get the highest score possible. It’s not that there was no motivation before, but having this objective was the boost everybody needed. We have seen numerous improvements – and this is reflected in our results.”
Control rooms, beyond the (video) wall
A control room is more than a video wall. In blog 2 we have already talked about the sustainability measures you can take. But don’t forget there is more equipment in the room than the video wall! There are also servers and controllers that sometimes have room for improvement. Barco has recently switched to a new platform of smaller – but still very powerful – devices that consume less energy (with ecolabel A++). This P050 platform is used in many solutions, including Barco CTRL (SAN-050 and SAS-050) and our video walls (as WME-050). By the way, this WME-050 was in fact the first Barco product to obtain the A++ Ecolabel!
Another way to lower the carbon footprint is by reducing on-site travel for maintenance staff. We achieve this by introducing the Video wall Management Suite – a cloud-based platform that allows remote management.
This means that failures can be evaluated from a central location so it’s not always necessary to send a technician on-site. What’s more, anomalies can be detected upfront so failures can sometimes be prevented. Using e-mail notification, the central service is informed of a potential issue, for example if a component overheats. Read more on this subject in this article.
Barco video walls: sustainable performance deluxe!
When looking at video wall technology, Barco can boast a number of flagship products that have a great sustainable performance. TruePix LED video walls, for example, have a A+ ecoscore. By implementing a unique energy-efficient standby and off mode, the product is a lot more energy-efficient than its competitors.
Furthermore, the repair-friendly design, with easy access to critical components, makes it a lot more suitable for repair - strongly prolonging the lifetime of the solution. Additional sustainability measures include the optimized packaging and use of halogen-free plastics.
When it comes to sustainable performance, rear-projection cubes are definitely worth mentioning here as well. They are not only the least energy-consuming video wall products, have a very long lifetime (even in 24/7 mode), and score tremendously well when it comes to reusability. When the projector has reached the end of its (very long) life, the mechanical structure and projection screen are still very usable.
That is why Barco offers upgrade kits for RPCs. You can simply introduce a new engine (projector and connectors), and you are ready for another 10+ years of service! An additional plus is that you also upgrade to the latest technology (RGB Laser!) without the need for any constructional work. Part of the wall can even remain functional while refurbishing! Note that Barco also offers upgrade kits for cubes made by Mitsubishi!
Also for Barco UniSee, we have an upgrade path foreseen. First of all, the mounting structure can be reused. Additionally, the units are modular, with power supply (embedded or remote); input electronics and LC monitor module all conceived as separate units. This not only eases maintenance, but also makes upgrading a lot easier. You can reuse the parts that are still up-to-date and replace obsolete units. This not only ensures a more sustainable way of upgrading, but also avoids unnecessary costs.
This concludes our NoMowMay Series Week. We could tell you a lot more: about the energy-saving measures in our production-sites, renewable energy initiatives, travel and shipping policies, etc. But that would probably lead us too far.
Bottom line is that at Barco we take our ambition seriously to become a relentless sustainability partner, and have many initiatives in place to further improve our performance and help you towards the most sustainable control room.
Do you have any questions about the sustainable performance of our products, or sustainability at Barco in general? Then don’t hesitate to contact us!