Using less and watching our waste

As a business we use large amounts of natural resources to run our services.

We are starting to measure our water consumption. This will help with detection of leaks which often happen underground where they cannot be seen.

We have had success with separating and recycling our waste, especially at the maintenance depots. At Blackpool station all the rubbish used to go in the same skip. A keen employee got in touch with the waste management company and now paper, cardboard, plastic and glass gets separated out for recycling.

We also have a lot of waste left in bins on trains and at stations, which adds up to a lot of rubbish! Neville Hill depot used to send 10 tonnes of rubbish (newspapers, cans, cardboard and bottles etc) to landfill every week. They are now sending it to a material recovery facility, where up to 60% will be recycled. If it works, we will be recycling over 300 tonnes each year from this depot alone so we would like to be able to roll out this process to the other two train maintenance depots as well.

At our York offices we have recycling facilities for paper, plastic bottles and cans, so 25% of office waste is being recycled. We want to repeat this across the business; many of our employees are keen for us to introduce recycling schemes in their place of work so this is something that we will be focusing on.