Green & Eco-Friendly Services - DaSilva's Auto Body

eco-friendly car

When you think about the push toward eco-friendly technology, do auto body shops come to mind? Many of us choose to eat organic foods or buy sustainable products but may not “think green” when it comes to services. By design, auto body shops require a large amount of power for operation. At DaSilva’s Auto Body, we’ve taken strides to reduce our environmental impact.

Our Naugatuck facility has implemented several greener practices, including:

The use of low water-based fluids for auto painting
Getting fully outfitted for solar energy
The use of a waste oil burner to dispose of and reuse waste oil, which reduces the amount of hazardous waste released into the environment.

How do these practices help the environment?

Solar Technology

As more businesses make an effort to reduce their carbon footprint, solar technology has become essential. Renewable energy offers a number of benefits:

It supplies an off-the-grid energy source. In some cases, a business gets all of its power from solar energy.
It helps a business not only reduce its carbon footprint but cuts down on day-to-day energy costs long term.
Using an alternative power source reduces reliance on environment-polluting fossil fuels, including coal, oil and natural gas.

DaSilva’s Auto Body is a fully solar-powered facility, providing eco-friendly and more efficient auto body services and repairs! We partnered with Advanced Energy Efficiencies to install a solar system that offsets nearly all of our electric supply.

Eco-Friendly Auto Painting

Until recently, auto body shops used solvent-based paints and coatings that contained Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). If xylene, toluene or methyl ethyl ketoneare is released into the environment, these VOCs can contaminate our water and air supplies. Known to evaporate quickly, these substances are present in paints, primers, sealants, compounds, some waxes and refinishing solutions.

No one should breathe these compounds in, so workers would wear masks while working on vehicles with them. Exposure may lead to headaches, nausea, fatigue and dizziness. As with other aerosol products, they gradually but permanently damage the ozone layer.

For everyone’s safety and less of an environmental impact, shops like DaSilva’s Auto have been switching to waterborne paint systems and HVLP (High Volume Low Pressure) spray guns. Not only are they lower in VOCs, but they also: