Our commercial nights recycling team took to the stage this month to celebrate their successes in increasing nightly recycling, taking home Collection Crew of the Year at the Let’s Recycle Awards for Excellence. This award was a result of the team’s dedication to keeping Westminster’s busy streets clean by capturing almost 3,000 tonnes of additional recycling from our commercial partners over the past 16 months.
Whilst most of Westminster sleeps, the team have steadily been increasing the amount of recycling collected. Thanks to the crew’s dedication the nightly recycling rate has increased by 81% in the first six weeks of 2025 vs the same period in 2024.
Deployed ahead of general waste collections, the crew undertook a street by street analysis of waste presentation, enabling our commercial sales team to identify any customers that needed more help identifying the correct disposal methods for their recycling and waste. This outreach campaign enabled customers to recycle more and to ensure their compliance with Simpler Recycling reforms.
The volume of recycling increased so much that a second recycling round was introduced in summer 2024, and in autumn a nights food waste service was launched, following a huge increase in the number of customers interested in receiving a collection.
Expanding recycling collections at night has been a key ambition for us, but would not have been made possible without this team’s hard work. Operating at night with all the extra pressures that a busy 24/7 urban environment comes with can be challenging, but this team have quietly focused on their mission to increase recycling, supporting our net zero ambitions by reducing the carbon impact of our waste collection by 948.5 tCO2e, and increasing our total Westminster City Council recycling rate by 1 percentage point from 23.08% in 2023 to 24.19% by the end of 2024.
The crew attended the Awards for Excellence, where some of the most important figures in the waste industry gave all of the crews nominated a standing ovation. Once the nights recycling team were announced as the winner they took to the stage for photos with their hard-earned award alongside Westminster’s nights manager and received even more applause for their efforts.
