We’re working with Recycling Lives to ensure our waste delivers social value

We’re working with waste management company ‘Recycling Lives’ to manage waste at our St James’ Lane office.

Last year 97% of the waste leaving St James Lane was recycled meaning only 3% had to be landfilled. Our Maintenance and Ground Maintenance Teams across Coventry produced over 684 tonnes of waste last year – the equivalent of emptying over 650 household wheelie bins per week! The waste produced comes from the repair and renewal of kitchens and bathrooms and the renewal of doors and fencing. It also includes general household and garden waste.

Recycling Lives are a social value enterprise and for each £1.00 we spend with them, £2.64 in social value is generated. This means that through our relationship with Recycling Lives we are able to support local communities through various community support programmes that are run as part of their social value schemes.

These support programmes include:

• Feeding communities through their food redistribution programme by redistributing surplus stock from supermarkets and suppliers to charities. This stops food being thrown away and ending up in landfill. The contribution from our spend with Recycling Lives provided 1,769 meals last year
• Reducing reoffending by supporting rehabilitation programmes and supporting a wide range of community-based programmes
• Providing accommodation and training for men experiencing homelessness. Recycling Lives support residents as they grow in confidence and gain new skills ready to move into a good job and stable home of their own.

Our Environmental and Sustainability Manager John Kyffin-Hughes says: “At St James Lane the waste is segregated into specific skips. This ensures that we recycle or recover as much waste as possible.

“I am extremely proud that we have achieved a 97% recycling rate at St James’ Lane – it’s a fantastic achievement and the teams involved should be really proud.

“Our Maintenance Operations Support Manager Scott Fincham works closely with Recycling Lives to maintain this high recycling rate and has recently introduced additional segregation measures to further improve recycling at source and to reduce our waste disposal costs.

“It’s extremely important to consider how we can positively impact the environment through sustainability best practices.

“Our procurement team helped us to secure the contract with Recycling Lives. Recycling Lives were selected when considering procurement’s objective of maximising the economic, social, and environmental benefits for the communities in which we operate to ensure we can contribute, and have a positive impact, to the communities that we work in.

“As a social housing organisation with a strong social purpose it is very important to us that we work with companies that are aligned with our social values. Recycling Lives is a perfect fit for Citizen!”

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