It is so nice to see Philips Lighting finally package together a series of internal sustainability programs and initiatives into one comprehensive presentation to the public. Called “Bright Lives, Better World“, the program addresses a range of issues, such as our efforts to use sustainable energy, produce energy-saving lighting systems, and introduce more advanced market-changing concepts like Light-as-a-Service and design for the Circular Economy. On top of that, it is great to see my company actually take a stand and make several serious public pledges moving towards a truly sustainable operation.

Over the past several years I promoted at several forums  (most notably my presentations to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solid State Lighting market seminars) that sustainable design — particularly “circular economy” and “cradle-to-cradle” design programs — hold the potential to radically reduce holistic costs of acquiring, using and disposing of a lighting system.  We have to start designing light fixtures, even fundamental lighting applications, from the ground up using the advantages of LED and other novel technologies to reduce complexity, design for maintenance, and for recovering value at end-of-usage.  There is no magic bullet, but internally there are many individuals throughout our enormous lighting organization that are working to “steer the ship” in the right direction.  Nice to see this promoted publicly, as it will only hasten the efforts across the board.