Celebrating Sustainability Achievements in London Bridge

 

Over 150 people from the business community were there to see businesses receive their awards.

Last week, we celebrated the London Bridge business community’s progress towards sustainability, from electric transitions to waste reduction and net-zero goals.

Last week, we celebrated some of the great sustainability work happening across the London Bridge business community.

Highlights included the transition to electric power, whether it’s a huge fleet of vehicles, tools used to maintain a local park, or drones transporting urgent blood samples. We also celebrated businesses implementing carbon literacy training, adopting new methods for monitoring emissions in construction, and an SME taking steps to become a B-corp.

Several of the awards highlighted the potential for innovative solutions to reduce waste, and we’re excited to be launching our ‘Towards Zero Waste’ initiative, partnering with multiple organisations to address diverse waste streams.

From the amazing vantage point of the View from the Shard, this ‘Great Place to Work’ event was also a celebration of more than 50 businesses in London Bridge who have signed the London Bridge Decarbonisation Charter. This framework sets the foundation for collective action towards a net-zero business district and encourages businesses to take charge of their own sustainability journeys.

We know that achieving net-zero goals will take all of us working together, and celebrating success is one way we, as a Business Improvement District, can engage with our business community, benefit from its innovation and energy, and keep the momentum going toward net-zero business operations that are clearly already underway.

Net Zero Steering Group members Steve Johnson (Hilson Moran) and Katrina Nardiello (Protiviti) proudly presented the awards.

Championing Achievements in Sustainability

Category: Upskilling and Knowledge Sharing

  • King’s College London - Rolled out Carbon Literacy training and a King’s Climate and Sustainability Award to staff and students.

  • Principle Cleaning Services - Delivered Climate Change and Carbon training to all management.

Category: Monitoring and Reporting

  • Macfarlane and Associates - Achieved their B-Corp certification.

  • Mace - Incorporated temporary works in their embodied carbon assessment to improve accuracy of reporting on construction emissions.

Category: Circular Economy and Waste

  • Norton Rose Fulbright - Phased out single use plastic in the canteen through re-usable CauliBox food and drink containers, removing 9,405L of waste and 77 times the height of The Shard in coffee cups.

  • Network Rail and London Bridge Station - Achieved a 90% recycling rate with The Green Block Mobile Segregation Unit, with 25 waste streams like coffee cups, which are repurposed and can now generate revenue.

  • Tesco Tooley Street - Reduced waste by donating over 17,000 meals to local charities with OLIO, turning waste that would otherwise go to landfill into animal feed, and installing a large bin for soft plastic waste for the London Bridge community.

Category: Energy

  • Womble Bond Dickinson - An office refurbishment to reduce operational emissions through efficient use of space, 100% LED lighting and upgraded IT.

Category: Transport

  • Mitie - Introduced their 6,000th electric vehicle (2,000 of them in 2024), three quarters of the total fleet, including vehicles that engineers drive on average 200miles per day to service grid connections.

Category: Innovation

  • Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust - Switched to electric drone for transporting urgent blood samples between hospital sites, taking less than two minutes.

Category: Supply Chains

  • Potters Fields Park - Worked with their contractors Gavin Jones and other suppliers and clients to use clean power for strimmers, trimmers, blowers, generators and the ice cream van.

Category: Green Infrastructures and Climate Adaption

  • Rider Levett Bucknall - Planted 3,235 trees to frow the RLB Forest, aiming for 10,000 trees by 2030. This is through a mix of volunteering, partnering and some offsetting.

  • Cityscapes - Repurposed their RHS Chelsea Flower Show Garden in London Bridge (Druid Street Gardens) - a gift to the area of thousands of climate tolerant plant species, planted up with help from local volunteers.

To learn more about how you can get involved, contact our Director of Sustainability and Place, Jack.

 
Ilsa Jones