Ash Awad, P.E., is McKinstry’s Chief Market Officer.

Every year on Earth Day, your newsfeed is probably dominated by stories about the grand sweeping changes underway (or not) to save our planet. We’ve seen global-scale environmental promises from Kyoto to Paris, paired with a deep-seated skepticism of man-made climate change.

So, where may we find common ground? The answer could be simple: Speak to everyone’s values without preaching to convert.

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Innovation is one of McKinstry’s core values.

Throughout 2016, McKinstry’s Western Washington Region organized an “Everyday Innovation” campaign that set out to share innovations and recognize innovators company-wide. We chose this name for the campaign because even smaller-scale or “everyday” innovations can make a big difference in improving the way we work.

All said, the organizers of the campaign have received more than 60 submissions that highlight an impressive array of creative thinking and have sparked discussions about innovation throughout McKinstry.

While the campaign is ongoing, we’ll be featuring nine of the very best innovation submissions we’ve received thus far in a series of Everyday Innovation posts.

This is the last post in the series. The first can be seen here, and the second is here.

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From the moment you wake up to the moment your head hits the pillow, there’s one constant in your life—light. Whether it’s natural or artificial, in your home or your office, fluorescent or LED, light is always surrounding you.

For being so omnipresent in our lives, it’s remarkable how lighting isn’t always focused on what’s optimal for people. Surprisingly often, the various lights in our lives are too harsh, too dim, building-centric, or one-size-fits-all.

One company—PLANLED, based in Federal Way, Wash.—is betting that people fed up with inadequate illumination will embrace the new concept of human-centric lighting (HCL). PLANLED distributes, markets, and sells a variety of different HCL solutions for indoor, outdoor/sports, and industrial settings.

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