With parts of London producing the highest carbon dioxide emissions in the UK, and commercial and institutional buildings contributing to about 70% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, the City of Westminster has established a new charter to increase sustainable business operations.
The Sustainable City Charter was created as a common collaborative framework for decarbonising and driving the sustainability of Westminster’s buildings. In this article, we will take a closer look at what the Charter is, how businesses can participate and how Commercial Waste Services can help with a key requirement of the Charter.
What is the Sustainable City Charter?
The Sustainable City Charter is a voluntary business and public sector partnership that provides a framework for climate and sustainability action relating to buildings across Westminster.
Jointly created by Westminster City Council and the Westminster Property Association, the Charter aims to help achieve the Net Zero by 2040 Westminster Climate Action plan.
Achieving Net Zero emissions means we have balanced the emissions we produce and the emissions we remove from the atmosphere through emissions-saving activities and offsetting.
The Sustainable City Charter aims to build a broad network of forward-thinking businesses and organisations of all sizes and from all sectors. It will establish a guiding framework for coordinated local action while sharing knowledge and expertise.
Covering themes such as energy, procurement, transportation and waste, the Sustainable City Charter offers valuable support and guidance for businesses and organisations.
The Charter is open to any organisation with a stake in a non-residential building in Westminster, whether through owning, leasing, managing or occupying.
How do businesses participate in the Charter?
Businesses looking to participate will be making a public commitment to delivering improvements to their buildings across a range of key environmental themes.
These themes include:
- Collaboration, partnership working and transparency
- Procurement and purchasing
- Deliveries to buildings
- Waste management
- Baselining, planning and reducing emissions from energy
- Construction works
- Transport and fleet
- Implementation
To sign up for participation in the Charter, businesses are asked to submit an Expression of Interest form via the Charter website. Businesses must then complete an application. When this is approved, the organisations will be listed on the Charter website. To continue participation, businesses must provide annual progress updates.
How Westminster Commercial Waste Services can help you participate
Waste management is one of the key environmental themes that all participating businesses must address and maintain. Participants must demonstrate that they have reviewed the amount of waste they have generated and developed a waste reduction plan. They must also have a process in place for separating recyclable waste for recycling or reuse.
See below for details about the Charter’s requirements:
In order to track how participants are improving their waste management, businesses must also measure how much waste they have been producing and then do a comparative measurement after implementing their reduction plan to determine if it was successful.
However, businesses that have not yet reviewed their waste generation or developed an action plan may not know where to start.
Westminster Commercial Waste Services can help with this. We offer a range of services and information which give businesses a clear and reportable view of their waste production and management, with an action plan for improvement.
These include:
- A free waste audit
- Waste composition analyses
- Educational materials
- Local and sustainable collections
Booking a waste audit and/or waste composition analysis
Westminster Commercial Waste Services offers a free waste management audit which allows our experts to come to your premises and identify how your waste management process is currently working. They will then help you begin measuring your progress.
This will help you comply with the Sustainable City Charter’s requirements for measuring and reporting waste performance
Simply click below to fill out a short form and book your waste audit:
Businesses looking to dig deeper into their waste management can schedule periodic waste composition analyses, which give a more detailed look at the performance of recycling rates, trend spotting and carbon footprint modelling. These specialised analyses are delivered to your business via a bespoke and comprehensive report.
Download our free educational materials to help you reduce emissions related to waste
Taking actionable steps towards correctly managing waste is one of the Charter’s key requirements, but it can be challenging to know where to get started. With this in mind, Westminster Commercial Waste Services has published a number of resources to help local businesses learn more about sustainable waste management on a practical level.
Only when the right materials are properly separated can they be recycled. With this in mind, we created a simple and clear What waste goes where? poster that can be downloaded for free.
To get a more comprehensive understanding of recycling best practices, we have also published The ultimate guide to real recycling for businesses in Westminster.
Reducing your waste in the first instance is another important consideration. Our guide, 9 tips for reducing your business waste, gives businesses simple steps for making significant changes to improve their waste management. We have also provided businesses with a comprehensive guide about climate change, and further actionable steps for becoming more sustainable. You can download the Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions guide here.
Using Commercial Waste Services as your local and sustainable collector
Westminster City Council, in partnership with Veolia, have opted to fully electrify its waste collection and street cleansing fleet. The electric fleet, which includes collection trucks, sweepers and electric bikes, is the largest operated by any local authority in the UK, and it supports an 89% reduction of carbon emissions when compared to a diesel-powered fleet. It also reduces typical combustion engine pollutants such as NOx and particulates, which are damaging to health.
We generate the electricity to power our fleet using the general non-recyclable waste we collect in Westminster every day. Our vehicles are charged directly by the electric power generated, making it a closed loop operation.
Westminster City Council’s waste collection service is legally obligated to collect from every street in Westminster. If your business is located in Westminster, this means that we are already passing your premises every day. Using other waste collectors simply adds inefficiency and pollution by duplicating what we already do every day.
Choosing Commercial Waste Services as your collector means that you are reducing any duplicate vehicle movements and vehicle emissions that would arise when another commercial waste collector collects your waste. Our collection service will help you achieve and maintain one of the key requirements in the Sustainable City Charter.
Learn more about how we can help you become a Sustainable City Charter participant
To learn more about how you can use Commercial Waste Services to help you apply for and participate in the Sustainable City Charter, reach out to our expert service team today.
