We’re proud to say that throughout the Cheshire Oaks building project we sent zero waste to landfill with 87.5% of all waste segregated on site. Responsible management of resources and a tight focus on waste reduction were crucial to diverting a massive 1168 tonnes of waste from landfill, but it’s no secret that we also made a great effort to prevent materials becoming waste in the first place. Here’s what we did with some of those materials:

• Nearly 55,000 tonnes – that’s enough to fill 30 Olympic swimming pools – of soil and clay that came from the initial excavation work has been re-used in a variety of local projects, such as the reopening of a municipal golf course, leveling of a new equestrian centre and capping of a contaminated quarry and a MOTO-X Park.
• Materials were set aside and advertised on Freecycle, Gumtree and Recipro for members of the community to collect and use. Items including pallets, cable drums, oaks logs and glulam beams were all up for grabs.
• We used over 2500 plywood sheets to protect the store’s ceramic floor during the fit out – nearly 90% of this plywood has been donated to some great community causes, amongst which was the refurbishment of a local arts venue, the building of a scout group’s hut and various local school and charity projects.
• We even made efforts to reduce the amount of newly quarried stone used in the building of the Cheshire Oaks store with 60% of the crushed stone we used coming from alternative sources such as demolition waste from a local crushing facility.
• M&S branded hoarding panels were reused as bee hotels.
• Two trees were donated to Chester Zoo as scratching posts for the lions.

Since opening, the store aims to minimise its waste through recycling 100% of food waste and diverting all other waste from landfill. The store actively promotes customer recycling schemes for hangers and clothes. And they encourage all those who come on site tours to bring a bag of old clothes with them to Shwop when they visit the store.

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