Commitment and collaboration increase recycling at Freccia Rossa

Abstract

Freccia Rossa had a relatively low recycling rate compared to other shopping centres in Sonae Sierra’s Italian portfolio. But thanks to the strong motivation of the shopping centre management team, the root causes of poor waste management were identified and a series of actions were taken to address them. Not only did Freccia Rossa invest in new waste management equipment, improve the layout of the waste area and ensure that recycling featured as a key topic in engagement with tenants. They went a step further by setting up a system of active collaboration between the security and cleaning teams and tenants’ staff, resulting in a much improved approach to waste management in food courts and enabling the centre to increase its recycling rate from 46% in 2015 to 61% in 2016.

Introduction

Freccia Rossa is one of our three Italian shopping centres. It is located in the town of Brescia and was inaugurated in 2008. As a Sonae Sierra development, Freccia Rossa implemented our environmental standards for development, including a design layout to promote waste recycling, and the centre is managed in accordance with an ISO 14001 certified environmental management system (EMS). Nonetheless, in 2015 Freccia Rossa’s recycling rate of 46% was below our global portfolio average and was notably lower than the Italian average of 63%. Taking these results into consideration, the shopping centre management team decided to take action to improve the situation. It was clear to them that better waste management could reduce environmental impacts, deliver cost savings through landfill tax avoidance and reduced waste disposal costs.

Background

The Freccia Rossa management team analyzed the waste situation in detail as they sought to establish the root cause of the low recycling rate. They found the waste separation practices that were in place at the time were insufficient due to the fact that the waste being handled is largely generated by tenants’ activities and the food court in particular. The unsorted urban waste was being stored together with recyclable waste in the same waste management areas, offering little visible incentive to pursue correct separation. Furthermore, there was no ‘pay by weight’ system in place that could provide a financial enticement for correct waste separation and recycling by tenants. The shopping centre needed to focus more on waste segregation, management and disposal, as well as engagement with tenants.

Challenge

The team needed to address the problems identified whilst also overcoming the additional obstacle of the high turnover rate among tenants’ staff, which meant that knowledge about important safety, health and environment aspects was easily lost.
Sonae Sierra already has effective procedures in place to raise awareness about safety, health and environment (SHE) risks among tenants, including Safety Preventive Observations (SPOs), meetings with tenants and induction training to tenants, and it was identified that these could be used as important channels for further engagement focused on waste recycling.

Solution

Starting in March 2016, the Freccia Rossa management team took action on several fronts.

Firstly, the security service supplier commenced a process of highly successful waste inspections to increase awareness about the importance of recycling, and make sure that waste was being separated correctly by tenants and cleaning teams. Tenants were asked to only use transparent bags for mixed waste in order to facilitate these inspections.

Secondly, the team reorganised the waste segregation area, ensuring that the shopping center’s waste could be more effectively separated by tenants and cleaning teams on site, then temporarily placed in containers before being collected and placed in the compactors by the authorized employees. At the same time, a new compactor for undifferentiated urban waste was installed, along with the paper/cardboard compactor already in place. A new cleaning supplier in the food court, along with updated control mechanisms to improve the separation of food waste, complimented these efforts.

With these improvements, the unsorted urban waste is stored separately from the recyclable waste. Recyclable waste is kept closer to the tenant units and food court and the urban waste store is further away, so it is in the tenants’ interest to deposit as much waste as possible in the recycling area.

Last but not least, the management team took the opportunity to remind tenants about waste separation during regular points of contact including SPOs, meetings and induction training. The operations manager, the supervisor from the security team and a member of the waste company also made visits to tenants, especially of the food court which involved one-on-one training focused specifically on organic waste separation. This resulted in a significant improvement in waste separation and recycling by the food court tenants.

As a consequence of these efforts, Freccia Rossa was able to increase its average annual recycling rate from 46% to 61% in just one year, and reduce its waste management costs by 51% (equivalent to approximately €40,000) over the same period. All waste that is not recycled is sent to an incineration plant with energy recovery, meaning that landfill is avoided altogether.

Closure

The management team at Freccia Rossa has proved that through consistent effort to identify and address the root causes of the low recycling rate, and in particular by engaging tenants and suppliers in a most effective way, significant improvements can be achieved in little time.
The control mechanism introduced by the security team and the individual engagement with tenant and cleaning teams were key factors for the success which can be replicated in other shopping centres to improve recycling rates and other aspects of SHE performance.