An astonishing ten Grundon Waste Management customers have won prestigious Green Apple Awards for Environmental Best Practice across a range of different categories.
These included three Gold Green Apples and, in the NHS & Healthcare Wastes Management category, Grundon customers swept the board by taking all three awards –
Gold, Silver and Bronze.
The awards were presented on Monday 25 November in a special ceremony at the Houses of Parliament in London attended by representatives from each of the winning organisations, as well as Grundon team members.
Steve Hill, Head of Sales from Grundon, said: “We are absolutely thrilled at the success achieved by all the winners, their awards are richly deserved and reflect the hard work and commitment they have put into making their waste management strategies work.
“They are to be congratulated on all their achievements and we are proud to have worked alongside them to deliver these improvements. Well done to everyone.”
The winners were:
NHS & Healthcare wastes management
Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust – gold
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust – silver
London North West Healthcare (LNWH) NHS Trust – bronze
Sports, Leisure & Hospitality wastes management
Forest Green Rovers Football Club, Gloucestershire – gold
The Grove luxury five start retreat, Hertfordshire – silver
Retail wastes management regional
West One Shopping Centre in Oxford Street, London – gold
Retail wastes management national
Southside Shopping Centre in Wandsworth – bronze
Mixed use wastes management
Brighton Marina leisure complex – silver
Products and recycling wastes management
BRITA UK, Bicester, Oxfordshire – silver
Office wastes management
20 Gresham Street, London – bronze
And in an added bonus, Grundon itself took home a Bronze Green Apple award in the Services Industries category for its work towards carbon reduction.
Toni Robinson, Head of Compliance from Grundon, said: “We are very proud to have been recognised for our achieving success with our own green credentials, and in particular the work we have done to reduce our carbon impact.
“While we spend a great deal of time helping and supporting our customers to achieve their environmental goals, we never forget that best practice begins at home, which is why this award is so special.”
Since Grundon began reporting its carbon footprint in 2000, it has cut carbon emissions by nearly 75%, while continuing to expand its business operations. It was also the first of the major waste industry players to sign up for a CarbonNeutral® fleet certification programme in 2014, supporting three carbon offsetting programmes in Uganda.
The ten Grundon customers who won prestigious Green Apple Awards for Environmental Best Practice were:
Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust
Gold Green Apple Award Winners – NHS & Healthcare wastes management category
Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust has won a prestigious Gold Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Wastes Management NHS and Healthcare category.
A delighted Steve Sellwood, Facilities Manager, who has responsibility for waste management throughout the Trust, said: “I am absolutely ecstatic about winning a Gold Green Apple. This recognition is so important for the waste team and the Trust as a whole and demonstrates what a difference we can all make.
“Staff are becoming engaged – from the Infection Control Teams, Karin Leech, and the theatre staff, Consultant Anaesthetist Dr Lauren Williams who have all been driving forward recycling including the PVC face mask recycling – and we continue to encourage staff to come forward with new sustainability ideas and opportunities.”
Steve also paid tribute to his waste team and assistant team leader Martin Cox who, he said, had made a significant difference in helping with the education and implementation of the new waste management initiatives and programme.
The Trust is one of the largest general hospital foundation trusts in the country, providing acute medical and surgical services to Reading, Wokingham and West Berkshire, as well as specialist services, to patients across Berkshire and beyond. Its centrepiece is the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading.
The award was based on its achievements in waste management and it works with Grundon Waste Management, which provides a total waste management service, including all healthcare waste, hazardous waste, domestic waste, recycling, food, WEEE and confidential waste.
Over the last year, the Trust and Grundon have worked together to implement a number of new measures, as well as building on existing successes:
- Achieving waste savings of over £5,000 a month through better segregation of waste streams
- Introduction of a new single-use PVC recycling stream, which has saved money and reduced carbon emissions
- 400% rise in cardboard sent for reprocessing
- Reduction in general waste by almost 10 tonnes a month, meaning a third less vehicle collections
- Waste Awareness Days and new Waste Watchers signed up
- Ongoing staff training
- Trials of innovative new ideas, including the recycling of baby bottles
Forest Green Rovers Football Club
Gold Green Apple Award Winners – Sports, Leisure & Hospitality wastes management category
Forest Green Rovers Football Club has won a prestigious Gold Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Sports Leisure & Hospitality wastes management category.
Collecting the award was Dane Vince, General Manager at Forest Green Rovers, who said: “I am really pleased, a huge amount of work goes on behind the scenes between the club and Grundon Waste Management, so to be recognised for all our efforts is really appreciated.
“The biggest challenge is encouraging everyone to put the right rubbish into the right bins in order to avoid contamination, however people are now openly questioning ‘where does your waste go’, ‘how do you reuse or recycle’. Society has moved to the point where you have to think about these things and do something about it, people expect you to offer solutions.
“This is a real partnership with Dan and the Grundon team, having a company that you can work closely with over a long period of time and who can effectively reduce the amount you spend on waste management is very unusual – most companies will provide the service and then forget about it.”
Looking ahead, Dane says the club’s next ambition is to install a new composting solution which will enable over 90% of total waste to be either recycled or composted.
The League Two football club, based in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, is majority owned by green energy supplier Ecotricity Group, and the team has been working with Grundon Waste Management in order to implement a radical waste management and reduction strategy.
It means that for the last two years, after a major focus on recycling and sending waste to energy recovery facilities to generate green energy, the club has sent zero waste to landfill.
Even more impressive, this season will see around 80 per cent of what was sent for energy from waste now going instead to in-vessel composting, including grass cuttings, food waste, compostable cutlery, cups, trays and packaging.
The club has also been working hard on initiatives such as sourcing sustainable and compostable cutlery and packaging for snacks including crisps and chocolate bars.
With segregation of waste critical to recycling success, new recycling stations with clearly signposted sections for compostable waste, general waste and mixed recycling are being installed and the aim is for 100% of everything supplied to supporters to be compostable or recyclable.
Recognised as the world’s only vegan football club after players, staff and catering outlets all switched to a plant-based diet, Forest Green Rovers’ commitment to sustainability has been such that in 2019 FIFA, football’s governing body, named it the world’s greenest football club. It was also the first club on the planet to be certified carbon neutral by the United Nations.
West One Shopping Centre in Oxford Street, London
Gold Green Apple Award Winners – Retail wastes management regional category
West One Shopping Centre in the heart of London’s Oxford Street has won a prestigious Gold Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Retail Waste Management Regional category.
A delighted Cyrus Annan, Centre Manager, said: “We live at a time where people across the globe are environmentally conscious. It means a lot to be recognised for all the work we are doing.
“We are passionate about the environment and the world around us and we think about how we can contribute. To have this recognition from the Green Apple Awards shows everyone that we are absolutely doing our best and trying to make a difference.”
For the last two years, Cyrus and his team have worked closely with waste management supplier Grundon Waste Management, and they were keen to identify additional recycling opportunities, increase waste education and training for tenants, improve the centre’s sustainability credentials and share good recycling practice with local schools.
Those goals were achieved, with results including a 118% increase in mixed recycling year-on-year and a 96% increase in food waste recycling over the same period. All tenants were given a new waste & recycling handbook, posters were displayed to make it as easy as possible to know where items should be recycled, and training sessions took place.
The introduction of Grundon’s Paper Cup Recycling service with specialist bins now sees thousands of paper cups collected for recycling every month, and West One even buys paper made from recycled paper cups for tenants, demonstrating the circular economy in action.
Another key highlight was a special waste education event, run by the centre and Grundon, to mark Global Recycling Day. It saw pupils from two local schools enjoy planting seeds in a ‘mini garden’ using the centre’s ‘home-grown’ compost and playing a game where they had to put the right waste into the right bin, before going home with Grundon goodie bags.
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust
Silver Green Apple Award Winners – NHS & Healthcare wastes management category
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust has won a prestigious Silver Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Wastes Management NHS and Healthcare category.
A delighted Paul Whitehill, the Trust’s Assistant Hotel Services Manager said: “It has been great to have recognition for all the hard work that people have been doing, especially in regard to waste planning.
“Our recycling rates are quite good now, but we are always looking to improve and this has been a real team effort; from the theatre staff involved in recycling new waste streams through to the porters who do a terrific job in taking waste to specific bins. Thank you also to Becky and James from Grundon’s clinical team, who were instrumental in helping us.”
The award was based on the Trust’s achievements in waste management across its different locations, which include Frimley Park Hospital near Camberley, and Wexham Park Hospital near Slough and a number of community sites.
It works with Grundon Waste Management and, over the last year, they have worked together to implement a number of new measures, as well as building on existing successes.
These include:
- Doubling of the Trust’s overall recycling figure
- Hundreds of pounds a month saved through new waste stream segregation
- Introduction of separate food waste collections
- New recycling schemes introduced for empty aluminium anaesthetic gas bottles and single-use PVC items
- A decrease in the amount of general waste sent for incineration
- Reduction in the number of vehicle collections
- Training for housekeepers and porters and other employees
- Waste Awareness Days to promote recycling
- New bins, posters and signage
The Grove, luxury five star retreat, Hertfordshire
Silver Green Apple Award Winners – Sports, Leisure & Hospitality wastes management category
The Grove, a five star luxury hotel complex in Hertfordshire, has won a prestigious Silver Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Sports, Leisure and Hospitality Wastes Management category.
Peter Hollingworth, Group Purchasing Director at Ralph Trustees, the family-owned company that runs The Grove, said: “This is a fabulous achievement in a relatively short space of time, everyone is to be congratulated on the performance they have delivered over the last 18 months.
“When we chose Grundon Waste Management, we didn’t want to use a company that just collects waste, the most important thing was to work with a company who would help us to help the environment and that is Grundon. Without them, we would never have got to this stage.
“We have the perfect partnership, Grundon gives us 100% commitment – we work particularly closely with Jack, and we have fantastic support from my own back-of-house team.”
Peter was joined at the prizegiving by Jamie Grierson, The Grove’s Back of House and Logistics Manager, who oversees waste management and is in charge of a team which includes kitchen porters, back-of-house supervisors, and bin operatives.
Named as one of the Leading Hotels of the World, The Grove appointed Grundon to handle its waste management in May 2018, with the key objectives of implementing a new waste strategy, increasing recycling and achieving zero waste to landfill.
Since then, The Grove has achieved all three, as well as dramatically cutting its amount of general waste, reducing its waste management spend and introducing a whole host of new initiatives to improve sustainability.
These include successful Waste Awareness Days and training for employees, installation of more than 60 new bins, a new collection system for hazardous waste and the introduction of a charity recycling programme for guest toiletries.
Grundon’s success at The Grove is such that from Spring next year, it will also take over waste management for two other hotels in the group, the Atheanaeum, on Piccadilly and the Runnymede on Thames, near Windsor.
Read The Grove case study: The Grove goes green in major recycling boost >>
Brighton Marina leisure complex
Silver Green Apple Award Winners – Mixed use wastes management category
Brighton Marina has won a prestigious Silver Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Mixed Use Waste Management category.
As the UK’s largest marina, it is home to a range of cafes, bars and restaurants, shops, bowling, gym, cinema, luxury hotel, over 1,000 apartments and the boats themselves.
A delighted Kirsty Pollard, the marina’s Centre Manager, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have been awarded a Silver Green Apple Award, it is a real achievement one we could not have done it without Grundon Waste Management and our teams on the ground, a real joint effort.
“We have a high amount of waste resulting from our many restaurants operators, limited budget and resource, we’ve had to work a lot harder on a lot less. That has meant always reinforcing the recycling message to all our food and drink outlets through workshops, posters, booklets and we’re thrilled with our success.”
Commercial owners Landsec had set a target to more than double the marina’s recycling rate by 2020, as well as achieving zero waste to landfill and reducing its carbon footprint. To achieve this, the marina worked with Grundon.
Within just over a year, recycling had increased from 34.4% to 62.5% with success stories including over 10,500kgs of green waste and almost 100 tonnes of glass collected and sent to recycling.
General waste was reduced by nearly 100 tonnes, segregated food waste increased by over 30 tonnes, zero waste to landfill was achieved and recycling figures were equivalent to 1,089 trees saved and 161,949kgs CO2 saved.
Other improvements include CCTV monitoring introduced to stop fly-tipping, black bin liners have been banned, a check and challenge area implemented, new bins installed and a waste information handbook has been developed for tenants and their employees.
Read our Brighton Marina case study: Brighton Marina is all aboard on waste management >>
BRITA UK
Silver Green Apple Award Winners – Products and recycling wastes management category
BRITA UK has won a prestigious Silver Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Products and Recycling Wastes Management category.
Bryan Edwards, BRITA UK’s Professional & Services Warehouse Manager, who attended the event, said: “We are absolutely thrilled with the award, but for us, the waste journey has not been achieved overnight. You have to have a structure and embrace the waste hierarchy, and to understand how that works, you must talk to experts like Grundon Waste Management.
“Without them behind us we wouldn’t have been able to achieve such success. James understands how and what we do, and he knows what our business needs are. This is not just about selling waste collection services, it is the expertise and knowledge that makes a difference.”
Grundon provides waste management services at the company’s UK headquarters in Bicester, where it produces millions of water filter cartridges a year for distribution worldwide.
The company was keen to increase recycling and identify new opportunities to improve how it disposes of different types of waste, both of which have been achieved with Grundon’s support.
Among the changes has been the sending of unwanted or empty aerosols to Grundon’s specialist aerosol recycling plant, plastic cups replaced with cardboard ones at drinking stations, the recycling of damaged wooden pallets, and over 207,000kgs of waste sent for recycling in just one year.
In addition, the company continues to meet its commitment for 100% diversion from landfill.
Read our BRITA UK case study: Grundon caps a recycling success story for BRITA UK >>
London North West Healthcare NHS Trust
Bronze Green Apple Award Winners – NHS & Healthcare wastes management category
London North West Healthcare (LNWH) NHS Trust has won its second consecutive Bronze Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Wastes Management NHS and Healthcare category.
Brenda Brown, Facilities Contracts Manager, who collected the Green Apple on behalf of her team, said afterwards: We are very happy to be the recipient of this award. It is a true testament of all the hard work that has been ongoing within the Trust to improve on waste management.
“It has been said that ‘great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people’, and we have a great team of staff, managers, waste champions and contractors who have greatly contributed to allow us to be the recipient of this award.”
The award was based on the Trust’s achievements in waste management across its three acute hospitals and nine community sites. It works with Grundon Waste Management, which provides a total waste management service, including all healthcare waste, hazardous waste, domestic waste, recycling, food, WEEE and confidential waste.
Over the last year, the Trust and Grundon Waste Management have worked together to implement a number of new measures, as well as building on existing successes:
- Waste awareness days and roadshows
- Waste audits 3 x a year
- In-depth training for staff, especially around offensive/infectious waste and waste contamination
- Recruitment of a Waste Champions Group
- Introduction of a telephone hotline to help staff with waste-related queries
- Ongoing 100% diversion of waste from landfill
- Increases in mixed recycling and other areas, such as cardboard recycling
- Introduction of new waste streams, such as diversion of toners and cartridges from general waste
Southside Shopping Centre, Wandsworth, London
Bronze Green Apple Award Winners – Retail wastes management national category
Southside Shopping Centre in Wandsworth has won a prestigious Bronze Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Retail Waste Management National category.
The award was presented on Monday 25 November in a special ceremony at the Houses of Parliament in London.
Pieter Strömbeck, General Manager, paid tribute to his hard-working team, saying: “Tenant buy-in is really important and crucial to helping us reach our target of delivering up to 70% recycling on-site.
“It is our guys on the floor who work day-in and day-out to achieve these changes and ensure tenants understand the whole process. They show real dedication, often going one step further to separate out different waste streams for recycling, and they thoroughly deserve this success.
“It’s great for the tenants too, who are making savings in their service charges, but the most important thing is that by making these improvements, it shows we can all be more sustainable and benefit the environment.”
Joining Pieter for the prizegiving ceremony were Nelson Buenano, Assistant Cleaning Manager, and Lenford Jackson, Cleaning Team Supervisor. Nelson commented: “The cleaning team all work very hard and take time to educate the tenants about how to recycle properly, so it is really satisfying to receive this award.”
The shopping centre had been set a target to recycle 70% of its waste on site by 2020 and called on Grundon Waste Management to launch a new waste and recycling campaign in January 2019.
Within the first five months, Grundon was able to achieve results including:
- More than 325,000kgs of waste segregated on-site for recycling
- Nearly 555,000kgs of waste diverted from landfill
- Over 200,000kgs of waste sent to Energy from Waste to create green energy
At the same time, the centre achieved 100% diversion of waste from landfill, and introduced on-site segregation for eight different waste streams to be recycled, including food, glass, cardboard and polythene.
A waste handbook was produced for all tenants and training provided by Grundon, as well as the introduction of new colour-coded bins and containers.
20 Gresham Street, London
Bronze Green Apple Award Winners – Office wastes management category
Flagship office building 20 Gresham Street has won a prestigious Bronze Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice in the Offices Wastes Management category.
Loren Ryan, Facilities Manager, JLL, who attended the ceremony, said: “We are absolutely thrilled and delighted to have been recognised for all the hard work and effort that has been achieved.
“Our waste management success story has gone from zero to hero and this will be a huge boost for both tenants and staff, I know it will encourage them to do even more to further our ongoing environmental goals.
“A big thank you too, to all the Grundon team for their dedication, training and education, which has enabled us to make such a difference.”
Located in the heart of the City of London, the building’s facilities team appointed Grundon Waste Management in January 2019 to implement a major new recycling and waste programme under the banner Go Green for Gresham.
Among the goals were improving tenant education and training, increasing recycling and segregation of waste, and supporting the building’s own fledgling Green Team of tenant representatives.
Following a campaign which included a detailed waste audit, waste handbooks for tenants, events and a Waste Awareness Day; plus the installation of new bins, compactors, signage and posters, the results were outstanding.
Within just three months, recycling had increased by 80% versus the same period in 2018, zero waste to landfill was achieved, and waste management costs were reduced dramatically.
In just four months, the equivalent of 115 trees and 15,562kgs of CO2 were saved and 11.9MWh power generated.