Here at Lakeside Village, we are always looking at ways to improve our recycling and to encourage our customers to do the same. In advance of next month’s Recycle Week we are celebrating our Think Green success and launching our new look recycling area. Deputy centre manager, Lyndsey Parry, our green goddess, shares more about what you can recycle at Lakeside Village Outlet Shopping and the difference your recycling can make!
We’re really proud to be opening our new look, enhanced recycling area so we’re ready for Recycle Week 2022!
The new area, based in the Guest Services, has a number of recycle bins where customers can bring everything from bras to batteries for recycling.
This year’s Recycle Week, that runs from 17 – 23 October, has the theme ‘Let’s Get Real’ with a focus on challenging perceptions and myths around recycling. This is brilliant as we strongly believe that by changing behaviours we can encourage people in our local area to improve their recycling behaviours.
Our newly revamped recycling area is a space where customers can recycle bedding, PPE, printer cartridges, bras, batteries and plastic bottles and we’re always on the look out for what else we can help with so if you have any ideas please do let us know!
As a centre we’ve been on a Think Green mission for some time now and so far this year we have recycled 375 bags of clothing and bric-a-brac, this has been donated to the Doncaster and Rotherham branches of the RSPCA.
We’ve also sent 20 large boxes of unwanted bras have to help a cancer charity, eight large boxes of batteries have been recycled and so much more.
Our revamped the area now has new recycling drop off bins along with facts about where the recycling goes and the difference it can make. We think that this is so important and wanted to share where your recycling actually ends up so we’ve also launched a new page on our website here to give our customers this information.
Small steps can make a huge difference and we want to encourage customers to think about the different things they can recycle and the impact that this will have on the environment.
This year we have also recycled 82 tonnes of cardboard, 11.3 tonnes of soft plastic, 10.2 tonnes of food recycled to be made into renewable energy, 11.5 tonnes of mixed hard plastic and paper and two large boxes of old printer cartridges.
We’re so proud of our green achievements so far and we have increased our onsite waste recycling to 80%, achieved zero to landfill and the management team, with partners, have continued our quarterly litter picks in our surrounding area to look after and maintain our environment.
Other items like our free electric car charging point will all make a difference and one of our latest initiatives is our Reading Corner where customers drop off their favourite reads, giving them a new life.
It has been lovely to see customers bringing bags of books to top the shelves up and to see families sitting and enjoying sharing a story as they take a break from shopping.
Customers who love books and love reading are invited to take books home to read, they can then return them or replace them with more books so every visitor to Reading Corner has a chance to read something new.
We are asking customers to ‘think before you throw’ and are really pleased to say that many of our fabulous stores also offer recycling opportunities.
Lakeside customers can ‘shwop’ at M&S Outlet, where clean, pre-loved clothing can be dropped off (even if it’s not from M&S). M&S will also collect household batteries to recycle.
At the Next Outlet, when customers replace a new electrical, electronic or batter-operated item with a new one from Next. They can simply bring the old item into store within 28 days, show the receipt for its replacement, and Next will take care of recycling it.
Hard to recycle plastics, like clean packaging pouches and make-up packaging, pumps and droppers, can be dropped off at The Body Shop to be repurposed for another life.
Costa and Greggs offer free water refills if customers bring in their own bottles, and Costa is also selling re-usable lids for their cups. Stores including The Works, ProCook, Cook N Dine, Next, Hallmark, Clintons, Trespass, Mountain Warehouse, Tog 24, all sell refillable water bottles.
Working together we can make a real difference and we are looking forward to seeing our recycling levels grow as customers join us on our ‘Think Green’ journey.
