Peterborough’s Queensgate Shopping Centre has picked up one of the accolades at Anglian Water Business’s annual ‘We Love What You Do’ awards, which aim to recognise firms protecting the environment in the East of England.
Environmental manager Carol Wakelin picked up the Making Waves award at a ceremony in Peterborough hosted by the regional commercial water supplier.
Queensgate’s Growing Greener initiative has encouraged the 90 stores it houses to save water, energy, waste and carbon. Following its launch in 2014, it first audited the water, energy and waste of the 83% of stores who opted to participate. It then produced an improvement plan for each tenant and has subsequently monitored and reported back (with additional recommendations where necessary) on the results. Altogether £477,000 worth of savings were identified, including enough water to more than fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool and enough energy to power over 1000 homes for a year. Many of these savings came from quick wins – for example, the distribution of toilet cistern bags provided by Anglian Water Business.
To reward good performance, Queensgate organised an awards ceremony for its tenants in April. It has also communicated the retailers’ good work to shoppers through in-centre messaging.
Carol Wakelin said: “As a centre, we had a good measure of what we controlled. We had already done a lot with Anglian Water Business on that. So we wanted to get a better understanding of what our tenants consumed and to help them make savings and reduce their running costs and risk.
