A strategic partnership between waste management and recycling company Binn Skips and St John’s Shopping Centre in Perth has proved that making an effort when it comes to recycling is no waste of time.

Leaving the business of waste collection to one side for the day, the two companies headed through to a glittering awards ceremony held last week at the Hilton Hotel in Glasgow where they picked up the Award for Best Partnership Initiative at the Scottish Waste & Resources Awards.

St John’s Shopping Centre and its retailers generate 243 tonnes of waste annually and management felt it could aim to have 40% of that waste recycled, with a view to increasing that target by 10% annually.

Following a review of the shopping centre’s waste management processes, Binn Skips identified that their waste operations were time consuming, labour intensive (relying on retail staff to segregate general waste and cardboard) and expensive.

In fact, for one member of the team, it was a full time job moving bins around from the retailers back doors to the compactor and cardboard skip. Not only that, large skips and a compactor took up a lot of space on an otherwise small service deck.

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Binn Skips took action, deciding that waste would no longer need to be segregated on site, increased the size of the bins and freed up space by cutting the number of bins by half. Waste collections increased from weekly to daily uplifts and all segregation and recycling was handled on site at Binn Skips’ specialist facility.

The net impact was positive for the environment and, in a tough financial climate, good news for the bottom line. By improving waste management St John’s Shopping Centre minimised the impact of escalating disposal and transportation costs, as well as Landfill Tax increases. On top of this they improved the amount of waste recycled from their target 40% to a massive 80% in the space of just twelve months.

St John’s Shopping Centre are now on target to achieve zero waste to landfill targets by 2014. Without Binn Skips, that target that would have taken years to achieve.

Siobhan McConnell, St John’s Shopping Centre manager, commented: “The partnership with Binn Skips has been an incredibly effective one for our business. Who would ever have thought that by changing the way we work, and simplifying the process, we could have made such a massive impact. This is not only good news for the environment, this is good business sense and we’re absolutely delighted to be standing by their side to receive this award and commend them for doing such a good job.”

John McGregor and Allan McGregor, directors of the family firm Binn Skips, said: “We are very pleased that our work with St John’s Shopping Centre has been recognised at a national level. We are committed to helping companies manage their waste effectively and to be part of the solution that works towards a zero waste to landfill target.

"We’ve demonstrated that recycling doesn’t have to be complicated and can also reap dividends. The Best Partnership Initiative Award is recognition that our joint efforts are exemplary and we are very proud that together, as a team, we have achieved such high industry standards.”

(GK/KMcA)