Three Ashdown Phillips managed properties will be presented with a Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice at this year’s ceremony, which will be held at the Houses of Parliament on November 15th. Two shopping centres – Idlewells in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire and Middleton in Greater Manchester - have both been recognised alongside Helical plc’s mixed use estate in Shoreditch, The Bower, for their ongoing commitment to sustainability.

At Idlewells Shopping Centre, they replaced their 25 year old fluorescent lights to LED versions, improving safety and reducing their carbon footprint with a saving of 7002kgs of CO2. They saw both a reduction electricity consumption and the number of lamps going to landfill, with resulting cost savings of almost £2,000 a year.

Over at Middleton, a series of initiatives led to their commendation, including reducing the total volume of waste produced from site by 20% in 2019, committing to the continuous upgrading of lighting to save 50,000kwh annually and utilising technology which reduces chemical usage, consumption of single use plastics and overall environmental impact wherever possible in the centre.

Meanwhile, the team at The Bower have been working closely with their cleaning contractors GreenZone to reduce the environmental impact of the large estate by making the switch to BioHygiene cleaning. This innovative alternative to raw materials that are known to be harmful to human health and damaging to the environment provides advantages such as a reduced impact on aquatic life, a reduction in plastic waste, transportation weight and overall CO2 emissions, as well as making the cleaning process more effective and safer overall for both the environment and the person using them.

Congratulations to the teams on their awards!