Recycling Week & Car Free Day

It’s Recycling Week and London Car Free Day on Wednesday 22 September, so we’ve rounded up some inspiration for reducing waste and considering your travel. 

Recycling Week, from 20 to 26 September is organised by environmental charity WRAP and is a week of campaigning aimed at raising awareness of recycling and reducing waste. We know this is an important topic for many of our member businesses, and it’s a great time to take a look at some inspiring case studies from the Quarter to help you further strengthen recycling practices, like Cushman Wakefield’s Sustainable Events Charter, PIMCO’s vegware success and how the Quarter’s businesses can help you go plastic free.  

Our Smarter Recycling scheme continues to offer members subsidised recycling and waste collections, with the added, unique benefit of reducing the number of waste collection vehicles in the area. Our delivery partners, Westminster City Council’s Commercial Waste Service and PaperRound, offer a range of ways to help you recycle as much as possible – for instance, SustainABLE boxes from PaperRound are great for those ‘hard to recycle’ items like crisp packets and cosmetics packaging and can be purchased for your organisation whether you have a wider contract in place or not. While Westminster’s Waste Service, provided by Veolia has unfortunately had to suspend in-person tours of their Mixed Recycling Facility in Southwark, it is available to watch online from the comfort of your desk to see what happens to your recycling and how it’s sorted. 

Further information and a number of resources and assets are available on the WRAP website.  

Also for the diary is London Car Free Day 2021 and World Car Free Day on 22 September. While activities are limited this year due to continued restrictions, the day provides a good opportunity to think about how you move around the city and consider changes that you could make.  

Have you tried the new e-scooters? Could cycling be an option? Active travel is great for mental health, for traffic congestion and for your physical health too! Free cycle training to build your confidence is available here. 

If walking is more your thing, information on low-traffic walking routes to take you on roads you might not have explored previously is available here. We have hard copies of these maps at BakerStreetQ office so let us know if your business would like some and we can arrange a delivery.