Eagle Lighting’s Educo Vitality Awarded Top Certification

Eagle Lighting’s Educo Vitality is the first luminaire in the Southern Hemisphere to gain Cradle to Cradle Certification.

Designed for educational facilities, Educo Vitality creates a comfortable environment for teaching and learning thanks to its very low Unified Glare Rating (UGR) rating.

In the spirit of “better lighting for people and planet”, seeking Cradle 2 Cradle certification was the next logical step in for Eagle Lighting’s sustainability journey.

“Regenerative design was top-of-mind for us when we decided to try for certification,” Eagle Lighting head of operations Peter Prodromos said.

“We’ve built our business on great products and service. So, it made sense to make improving our products a core part of our sustainability work.”

Companies know they must accelerate their transition to sustainable practice to prosper in the marketplace under a social license driven by shareholder demand and community expectation.

This awareness among the wider population—as well as international reality—is exerting increased pressure. One in four companies in the ASX Top 200 now has a net-zero target for carbon emissions.

As such, Eagle’s sustainability journey is our way of actively participating in being the solution to help our customers achieve their objectives, the company said.

Cradle to Cradle Certified is the world’s most advanced science-based, multi-attribute certification program for designing, making and verifying materials and products that are safe, circular and responsibly made.

Cradle to Cradle Certified manufacturing ensures a world where safe materials and products are designed and manufactured to maximise health and wellbeing for people and planet.

▲ Educo Vitality is designed for the education sector, making its Cradle to Cradle Certification even more relevant.

The standard encourages continuous improvement over time by awarding certification on the basis of ascending levels of achievement and requiring certification renewal every two years.

Cradle to Cradle Certified products are awarded certification based upon their performance across five critical areas of sustainability: material health, product circularity, clean air and climate protection, water and soil stewardship, and social fairness.

Material health helps to ensure that products are made using materials and chemicals that are as safe as possible for humans and our environment.

This is done through a process of inventorying, assessing and optimising material chemistries.

Product circularity: the material reutilisation category aims to eliminate the concept of waste by helping to ensure products remain in perpetual cycles of use and reuse from one product use cycle to the next.

Clean air and climate protection: the renewable energy and carbon management category helps to ensure products are manufactured using renewable energy so that the impact of climate-changing greenhouse gases due to the manufacturing of the product is reduced or eliminated.

Social fairness: the aim of this category is to design business operations that honour all people and natural systems affected by the manufacture of a product.

Water and soil stewardship: the water stewardship category helps ensure water is recognised as a valuable resource, watersheds are protected, and clean water is available to people and all other organisms.