The very nature of its activities means that the cleanroom sector has always been greatly concerned with protecting the environment. One of the key aspects of contamination control is keeping anything that might pollute the natural world and the life it supports safely out of harm’s way.
Now, it seems, the cleanroom is expanding its influence over environmental matters and is becoming increasingly involved in the wider field of sustainability.
All over the world production facilities are springing up for hi-tech products that will play an increasingly important role in improving global energy efficiency, reducing the output of waste and cutting consumption of scarce resources. Many of these new industries are dependent on cleanrooms for their manufacture.
Then there is another group of companies working hard to improve the efficiency of the cleanrooms themselves by reducing energy use, making more efficient use of other inputs and handling waste products cleanly, safely and effectively.
Perhaps most intriguingly there is the discovery by researchers at the University of York that key constituents of some of the hi-tech products can, once the products themselves reach the end of their useful life, be recycled into something that can help to renew the human body itself, by assisting with tissue regeneration and drug delivery.
The addition of silver nanoparticles will even enable the innovation to play a role in combating bacterial infections.
Thus the wheel comes full circle – and what a virtuous circle it is.