BIRCHWOOD Shopping Centre, home to over 40 national and independent retailers, have been crowned winners of the Green Apple Award 2023 for their project ‘Birchwood Goes Back to Basics.”
The Green Apple Awards are run by The Green Organisation – an independent, international, non-political, non-profit environment group dedicated to recognising, rewarding and promoting environmental best practice around the world.
Birchwood Shopping Centre partnered with B&M Waste to increase the shopping centre’s recycling performance and green credentials and triumphed over stiff competition from a variety of sectors across the UK including retail and hospitality.
Their project ‘Birchwood Goes Back to Basics’ involved the implementation of several initiatives to increase the recycling performance at Birchwood Shopping Centre after achieving zero waste to landfill a number of years ago.
The project involved the implementation of several new initiatives to increase the recycling performance at the centre. Just some of these new practices included:
- Increased visibility in waste reporting.
- Occupier accountability with a system in place for those occupiers who needed additional support.
- Opening an Honesty Library to recycle old books rather than sending them to general waste.
- Additional training offered to each occupier to help them to correctly segregate their waste.
- Sending more food bins for anaerobic digestion.
- Exchanging external machinery for a more environmentally friendly electric cleaning machine.
In addition to the above Birchwood Shopping Centre has reduced their electricity consumption by 27% in the past 12 months and has recently installed water-saving devices in the shopping centre toilets which are set to reduce water consumption by 20%.
Birchwood Shopping Centre has also introduced beekeeping on the roof of the centre led by local beekeeping expert, Brian Morrow.
Kirsty Robinson, Facilities Manager at Birchwood Shopping Centre comments: “We are just so proud and delighted to receive a Green Apple 2023 Award for all of our efforts here at Birchwood Shopping Centre.
“It has been a mammoth effort from all of our teams, our occupiers and our service partners. We set out to achieve some pretty high targets and it’s truly amazing what can be achieved when you all work together.”
The Green Apple Awards are held annually and are judged by an esteemed panel of judges from more than 20 sectors. London’s Houses of Parliament will play host to this year’s award ceremony in November with the Birchwood Shopping Centre taking home their award on the evening.
