Environment

Rubbish Day…?

Sally Smith, COO of West London Chambers, was one of the guests at a recent visit to Lampton Leisure Services.

On Thursday, 8 September I had a brilliant day, despite the heavy rain, as a guest of Lampton Community Services, learning all about their varied services, from park maintenance to waste collection to maintaining the councils’ 16,000 homes. Lampton Community Services, led by their MD, the inimitable Sam Leigh who featured in the magazine back in May 2021, is made up of Coalo, Greenspace360 and Recycle360. Their mission is to deliver exceptional services that make Hounslow a better place to live, underpinned by an unwavering commitment to the environment and social value.

I was among a number of guests, including some of our Councillors, to learn more about the organisation. We met at the Ashmead Road Depot in Feltham and were then driven to Bedfont Lakes where we met the Countryside and Park Ranger teams. The former gave us an interesting tour of the Education Centre, including the menagerie of mammals, birds and reptiles. Cllr Katherine Dunne and I especially enjoyed meeting the large spider. The Park Rangers have just been introduced to the various parks across the borough and have been particularly busy this summer, owing to the extreme heat, tackling grassfires.

We then moved onto Recycle 360 in Southall, where we saw the waste management in action. Recycle 360 bulk, process and ship over 22,000 tonnes of recycling a year collected from Hounslow residents - So much plastic! But all being sold into the recycling industry for good value, so please do keep doing your bit both at home and place of work.

I was immensely impressed with the large water pumping system, designed to respond to potential fires in the centre, through rapid deluge of up to 2.2Million litres of stored water, to extinguish any fire in minutes. With a serious fire in a waste centre somewhere in the UK every day, Hounslow’s is one of the most modern and best protected from the risk

I was also impressed to learn that the site is 99% run on renewables – the mobile plant used for materials handling is alternative fuel ‘HVO’ giving a 90% CO2 reduction on normal diesel, while electricity is a mix of site generated solar power and guaranteed renewable source from the grid.

On Thursday, 8 September I had a brilliant day, despite the heavy rain, as a guest of Lampton Community Services, learning all about their varied services, from park maintenance to waste collection to maintaining the councils’ 16,000 homes.