As a specialist in industrial air filtration and extraction Filtermist lives and breathes clean air, so when we heard about Clean Air Day (June 21st) we jumped at the chance of getting involved and encouraging our team to do their bit.

We are lucky enough to have an area of ground behind our Telford HQ which is currently in the process of being reclaimed by nature! We’ll be planting five apple trees on 21st June to ensure the benefits of Clean Air Day last way more than just one day.

We’ll also be encouraging our employees to think about how they can get involved and to pledge their support - keep an eye on our twitter profile to find out what they say!

The Clean Air Day website lists a wide variety of ways that people can get involved both on the day, and by changing their own habits to reduce pollution indoors and outside. These include:
•    Ditching cars for the day if possible and using alternative modes of transport (cycling, walking, public transport), or car sharing if other options aren’t feasible
•    Ensuring tyres are correctly inflated – this can make a significant difference to fuel consumption
•    Bringing a packed lunch so no car journeys are required at lunchtime

Filtermist and the environment
Ensuring the air is clean for our customers is what we do (and have done since 1969), but minimising the impact the company has on the environment is also extremely important to us. Filtermist first secured ISO14001 accreditation in 2003 and has implemented a number of measures designed to reduce energy consumption and waste.

Effective industrial extraction
As a company, we predominantly deal with ensuring indoor air is clean. Our oil mist filters extract and filter contaminated air at source meaning it can’t escape into the atmosphere.

The manufacturing processes undertaken at our Telford HQ generate fume and smoke rather than oil mist, so we installed a centralised extraction system which includes two A Dust 5 filters from our sister company Absolent AB. This system includes 16 pick-up points which extract polluted air generated in processes including welding, spinning, grinding and linishing – find out more here.

Regular LEV Testing ensures that our extraction system is operating as intended, and we offer this service to customers nationwide.
The control of hazardous airborne substances is regulated by CoSHH, but it is not just manufacturing environments which are subject to potentially harmful pollutants in the air. The Clean Air Day website contains a useful article on indoor air quality.

Cars
Nine of our company vehicles are hybrids and we have five electric charging points in our carpark.

Buildings
The glass used along the entire front of our purpose-built headquarters is designed to retain heat inside the building, whilst Stoke based Filtermist company Dustcheck has solar panel installations at both of its sites. These generate approximately 50,746 kWh per year meaning the investment will have paid for itself five times over the panels’ expected 20-year lifespan.

In Telford, display screens and the air conditioning system are programmed to only come on when the office is in use. All lighting is sensor activated and switches off if no movement has been detected for 10 minutes.

Paperless office
Filtermist has reduced the amount of paper it uses to such an extent that we were actually able to remove three filing cabinets from our office last week – opening up a significant amount of space for our service and spares team!

Staff are asked to switch pcs off at the end of each day and all centralised printers go into standby mode when not in use.

Recycling
We recycle as much as possible – we have recycling points for kitchen waste, paper and cardboard, and all of our metal waste is collected for reuse by a specialist company.

Visit www.cleanairday.org.uk to find out how you can get involved.