How Modern Mechanical Handling Equipment Can Help Lower Your Business’ Carbon Emissions

Mechanical handling equipment has come a long way over the last 100 years of so. With the invention of the forklift we were suddenly able to lift larger, heavier loads than ever before. This technology drove industry and development for decades, with construction projects becoming bigger and better than ever before. Sadly this meant until recently there were huge carbon footprints associates with each and every major construction project we embarked on.

Thanks to innovation in recent years, your heavy lifting activities on site no longer needs to be directly harmful to the environment. In fact, with the latest mechanical handling equipment, you can lower your business’ carbon emissions without negatively affecting your bottom line.

Electric forklifts are a great example of this. Unlike the internal combustion/diesel forklifts of the 20^th century, the latest electric forklifts are surprisingly environmentally friendly. Not only do these rechargeable vehicles run on entirely on electricity, they are much quieter than diesel forklifts meaning that they don’t generate any real noise or air pollution. This in turn means that electric forklifts are perfectly suited for indoor warehouse and construction work where air quality and noise levels are extremely important to health and safety. As if this wasn’t enough, they’re designed to be more compact, manoeuvring better when compared to diesel forklifts carrying similar loads.

Such impressive machinery often sounds expensive, especially when you have your business’ bottom line to consider. Believe it or not, these electric forklifts are often cheaper to maintain than their diesel counterparts, not only because they’re smaller, but the lack of an internal combustion engine means that they contain less moving parts to worry about, which means the amount of parts which may need replacement is cheaper and can be brought online conveniently at places like securefixdirect.

Not all warehouse applications require a piece of mechanical handling equipment capable of lifting several tonnes several metres into the air however. Using an electric forklift in these situations is no longer the most environmentally friendly option. Depending on the application required, there are a range of manual stackers and pallet trucks which simply rely on the hydraulic pressure generated by a hand-pump which allows you to effectively move and carry loads of up to 2500kg. Since the mechanics run on manual pumps, there are zero carbon emissions associated with the operation these manual handling tools other than those your staff would normally produce by breathing. As long as you’re not looking to lift your load more than 2 metres, these are without a doubt the most environmentally friendly pieces of manual handling equipment around.