With sustainability and environmental issues at the forefront, individuals and companies are doing what they can to limit their environmental impact and reduce their carbon footprint. Although many people are more aware of how their actions affect the environment, there are things we still take for granted or don’t think about. One of these areas is the wiring infrastructure.
Are you thinking of tearing out your old multi-mode fiber backbone and replacing it with single-mode fiber?
Think again. What will you do with the multimode fiber cabling you remove from your building? After you pull out the old multimode fiber, you might throw it away, along with the other waste and leftover materials created by the rip-and-replace project. All that multimode fiber will then end up in a landfill, and here’s the problem: No one knows how long multimode fiber will take to decompose. Some think it could take hundreds of years.
Recycling as an option
Can multimode optical fiber be recycled?
It depends on where the project is geographically located as it requires a specialized recycler. It is not as simple as throwing multimode fiber in the blue bin and expecting it to be recycled. The exact amount of recyclable cable depends on the composition of the cable. The cable sheathing and armor can be ground up and recycled, but what about the Kevlar® reinforcement wires? Although some of the multimode cable components can be recycled, not all of them can be.
When it comes to sustainability, ripping out the old multi-mode fiber and replacing it with single-mode fiber is not very sustainable.
The most sustainable approach
There is a sustainable alternative to tearing and replacing existing multimode fiber: OneMode™.
Panduit’s OneMode offering is a device that allows single-mode optical modules to be used with an existing multimode fiber backbone. OneMode works by shaping the single-mode laser light so that when it is launched into the multimode fiber backbone, it uses only the fundamental mode of the fiber. This means that the multimode fiber behaves as if it were a single-mode fiber. All the modal and chromatic dispersion limitations that exist with multimode fiber disappear.
Installation is quick and simple. OneMode deployment requires only access to the ends of the legacy multimode fiber. Fiber can be upgraded in a few hours with minimal disruption to operations. Because OneMode takes much less time than a rip-and-replace design, it is less expensive to deploy.
OneMode is the sustainable, environmentally friendly and economical way to upgrade your existing multi-mode fiber backbone.
Learn more about how this solution could work in your facility at www.panduit.com/onemode . Or contact your ASIT salesperson for more information.
