Repro-Light Unveils Future Sustainable Luminaire Design Findings

Progress on the Repro-Light project was unveiled at TiL 2019. The Repro-Light consortium is an EU funded research project that aims to support the European lighting industry in moving towards a more sustainable and competitive future. Horst Rudolph from ITZ Trilux Group discussed the project in his keynote address.  “The major goal of the project is sustainability and alongside colleagues from Spain we are working to find the optimum solution. The research said more than 50% of the users would like to have improved light. Users are aware of the variability of natural light and they want automatic adaption to individual needs.”   Given this awareness from end-users the challenge remains to respond to this whilst considering cost and longevity. Horst said “today we are thinking of modularity first, maybe high volume production can create more individual luminaires. We also need to discuss the re-use or exchange of parts.” 

Deidre Wolff

Deidre Wolff, PhD candidate from IREC echoes this and presented to the TiL delegates, how the circular economy meets the lighting industry.  The Repro-Light project has also conducted an environmental life-cycle assessment to see the impact of LED luminaires.  This quantifies the impact of raw material extraction, production, manufacture, use and disposal. The principles of a circular economy are increasing maintenance, re-use, refurbishment and recycling of luminaires, with the goal of reducing the consumption of primary materials and the impact of disposal.  The benefits of circular economy for design have been published in the Lighting Europe white paper Serviceable Luminaires in a Circular Economy.  Deidre reveals, “As part of the Repro-Light project we are looking at designing a modular, exchangeable, serviceable, upgradable LED luminaire which has longer lifetime thus keeping these products in use, reducing the material consumption from primary materials and reducing the waste generation.”  The in-depth life-cycle assessments are well underway we can await further news from the Repro-Light project soon. 

Consortium members are: Bartenbach, BJB, Grado Zero Espace, IREC, Luger Research, Mondragon University, Rohner Engineering, Trilux

The Repro-Light project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 768780.