Fiers de notre verte TOPPING

Italyis famous worldwide for quite a few things: food, soccer, rubber flooring and obviously sunny weather !
 
Artigo started since years to develop his very aggressive Green Policy which recently reached its peak by taking full profit of the solar energy.
During the last few months of 2010 we have in fact equipped the factory roof,  with a photovoltaic system covering more than 7.500 m2 .
The  4.173 solar panels installed on our production plant located in Cairo Montenotte (only 10 Km as a bird flies from the Mediterranean Sea) will produce 1,07 GWh (1.070 MWh) of energy per year, which roughly means about 12% of Artigo energetic needs equal to the annual need of energy of about 350 families.
This decision and the consequent substantial investment, will save our world about to 4.920 TOE (Tonnes of Oil Equivalent) in twenty years, where one TOE is the amount of energy released by burning one tonne of Oil .
In more simple words, this means that in twenty years Artigo will save 14.400 tons of CO2; it would be necessary to plant more than 1 million m2 of forest to face the emissions saved by our decision.
 
 
Photovoltaic generating systems do not produce pollution under any point of view:
 

• Chemical: they don’t produce emissions or wastes.
• Thermal: the maximum temperature reached is about 60° C
• Acoustic: they work in silence
• Energy transport : the energy is created and utilized on site with no loss of energy due to transports or conversion of voltage.
• Maintenance costs: very low since there are  no moving parts and it is solid state energy.
• Aesthetic: the panels are basically not visible from ground level and anyway they do not look as terrible as a roof can sometime look...

 
This huge investment on green energy is part of Artigo awareness about environmental issues that starts with our production lines which are designed to run without producing toxic waste, with very limited emission of fumes and recycling almost 90% of the trimmings and production wastes.
 
We do care about the after sales performance of our products and our smooth floorings are supplied with an exclusive 100% solid coating (PRO), which allows for easy maintenance with limited use of water and pollutant chemicals.
 
Artigo is of course ISO 14000 certified since years and currently undergoing the BREEAM life cycle assessment certification to prove its environmental performance.
 
 
 
Artigo is an active member of the Italian chapter of the Green Building Council ( promoting the LEED System)  and our floorings comply with the most important biocompatibility requirements concerning the emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) in indoor environments.
 
We are proud of our brand new Green Topping, and we keep going !