Green Electricity

Faber-Castell's renewable energy sources

Solar, wind, or water: renewable sources of energy are ‘in’. And at the Faber-Castell headquarters in Stein near Nuremberg, roughly one third of the electrical energy is generated from water power. This environment-friendly source is nothing new, either: there have been water wheels in Stein since the 14th century. The river Rednitz, on whose banks the factory was built, had cut a channel deep into the Keuper sandstone rock and runs through it at high speed. A diagonal spillway led water off to the mills where it drove the wheels. Water power became important for pencil production in the 19th century: Lothar Faber’s company was mechanizing production and needed power to drive the machines, which he obtained by buying up the mills. The power was transmitted by shafts and leather belts running on pulleys. In 1956 the last of the water wheels were taken out of service and replaced by a Kaplan turbine. A shutter weir was built to raise the level of the river by roughly 2.2 metres. The water flows through the turbine at a rate of 12 cubic metres per second, driving a generator that produces over 250 kW of electric power. Other rivers in the region have been dammed to form reservoirs, and the overspill is led into the Rednitz, so there is always enough water to drive the turbine, even in a dry summer.

Eco-Manager of the year

Faber-Castell is environmentally aware in other fields, too. The greater part of its timber requirements are covered by its own sustainably managed forests in Brazil, certified by the FSC. It coats its black-lead and colour pencils in water-based paint without organic solvents, and derives part of its heating requirements from wood pellets compressed from sawdust and shavings resulting from the pencil production. The forests absorb several times as much CO2 as the company produces world-wide. In 2008 the chairman of the board, Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell, was voted “Eco-manager of the year” by the WWF and the German business magazine Capital.

Products from Faber-Castell Design

by: Tania Ferreira