Decarbonising Transport Part 2

Electrifying our fleet in Westminster
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Find out how we're helping Westminster go greener

Hit play and settle in for a thought-provoking episode of 'Ask The Expert' as we discuss the electrification of our Westminster fleet, and the benefits it will bring.

 

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Start Listening

Edward Yendluri from Westminster City Council and Briony Bendle from Veolia UK join us to explain how we are helping Westminster to go greener.

 

Working in partnership with Westminster City Council, we operate a fleet of over 60 new and upcycled electric vehicles, including 14 new electric street cleaning bikes. The fleet makes the West End fully electric for the first time, reducing emissions and leading the way toward carbon neutrality. 

In this episode of 'Ask the Expert', Edward and Briony explain how the electrification of Westminster's fleet is helping one of London's most densely populated areas to go greener.

Decarbonising Transport: Electrifying our fleet in Westminster - Transcription

00;00;01;09 - 00;00;24;18

Speaker 1

Good morning, everyone, and I hope you're all well. My name's Martyn Fuller and I am the head of Marketing, Responsible Business and Proposals at Veolia, UK. That's when I'm not doing this. Welcome to our latest LinkedIn live. It's the second part of our decarbonizing transport series. Last time we resource the importance of tackling electric vehicle packs at the end of their life.

 

00;00;25;02 - 00;00;57;01

Speaker 1

And thank you all for all your feedback. All your questions and all your comments proved extremely popular, and I'm hoping today's conversation is going to be just as stimulating. I'm joined today by Edward Yendluri. Edward is the Waste & Recycling Manager at Westminster Council. And as the strategy manager for Municipal Veolia UK, I want to talk about the electrification of Westminster's waste collection and street cleansing fleet.

 

00;00;57;16 - 00;01;26;03

Speaker 1

It's a success story, but how much of a success is what we're going to find out today? According to data from the World Health Organization, 19 9% of the global population breathes air that exceeds the World Health Organization's guideline limits and contains high levels of pollutants. This dramatically highlights the urgent need for more of us to make the switch to zero emission vehicles, decarbonization and greenhouse gas.

 

00;01;26;03 - 00;01;55;09

Speaker 1

And climate change is one aspect, but it's not the only important problem we face. The benefits of moving towards electric vehicles goes beyond the impact of pollution and electric vehicles. Helping to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels is, as I say, just one aspect. Adam Brody And shortly I'm going to be coming to you and asking you some questions, and I'm hoping you can enlighten me and enlighten others about this topic.

 

00;01;56;10 - 00;02;04;08

Speaker 1

So first of all, I would invite my guest today to introduce himself. So Brian, would you like to introduce yourself?

 

00;02;05;14 - 00;02;25;09

Speaker 2

Yes. Hi, everyone. I'm Briony. So, yeah, I'm the strategy manager within all municipal division in the UK. The idea is what that basically means. I work with our local authority partners across the UK on their strategy, of which decarbonization is obviously one of the key themes at the moment.

 

00;02;26;12 - 00;02;33;19

Speaker 1

That's me. Thank you. Welcome, Edward and Lyric. Please join us and tell us all about you.

 

00;02;35;01 - 00;02;57;09

Speaker 3

Morning, everyone. My name's Edward Louis. I'm a waste and recycling manager at Westminster City Council in charge of the operations and waste disposal, along with this project about another project, which is the fleet decarbonisation. And that's the reason why I'm here today to share my experience with you guys so that you can build upon it.

 

00;02;58;27 - 00;03;18;14

Speaker 1

Thanks very much. You all know the drill. I'm going to ask a few questions. Some of them will be sensible. Some of them may seem less sensible, but that's because I'm not the brightest being in the bag and I don't always understand. So I'm hoping you can help me today. And I'm going to come to you first, because we've said it a couple of times now.

 

00;03;18;17 - 00;03;40;14

Speaker 1

Westminster, City Council, Westminster. What could you provide to context voters? I know where Westminster is. I could about get that. I am a Yorkshireman so would be very unhappy about going there but not for any boundaries. It's just, you know, northerners don't travel well. Ed, could you tell us what we mean when we say Westminster City Council? Can you put that in context for me?

 

00;03;40;24 - 00;04;00;17

Speaker 3

Yeah, I'm sure pretty much everyone knows or at least sees a bit of Westminster every day in the daily news. Well, Westminster is in a London local authority. It's ineffectual. It's just at about eight square miles with the stake all over the green parks and so on. It's just effectively a four square miles area, but it houses a quarter of a million people.

 

00;04;00;17 - 00;04;19;25

Speaker 3

Residents adopt it in that and I can imagine how dense that would be with over 1 million people stepping in and out with investments on a daily basis. And, you know, lot of people will be, you know, familiar with Westminster to an extent, but, you know, Westminster within that four square miles, we got the likes of Buckingham Palace, we got the Parliament House.

 

00;04;20;07 - 00;04;41;25

Speaker 3

You know, it is massive and it's a heart of the city. And it's got the most number of embassies and world famous tourist attractions in Westminster than anywhere else. So, you know, that is a reason for the footfall and that's Westminster. And, you know, no wonder why it has the highest amount of waste generated because of the footfall.

 

00;04;41;25 - 00;04;48;18

Speaker 1

Well, so I was actually just you were talking there and it was a waste. And what would that look like? Do you have any sort of. Yeah, I think that.

 

00;04;49;02 - 00;05;11;15

Speaker 3

If you compare with, say, for example, any other local authorities in southeast or southwest or so on the go, the £10 is the areas we do, but they have like 28 of the waste we collect. So we collect in Westminster about 190,000 tonnes around. So it's a huge, huge amount of waste generated from a full square mile area.

 

00;05;12;04 - 00;05;34;29

Speaker 3

So yeah, it's just an incredible challenge. I would say if you work in Westminster Waste Management, you can work anywhere else. The amount of events that usually take place like right from the marathon too, you know, for Notting Hill Carnival and so on. And the line is celebrating the year 2022 win, so on, so you know, planned unplanned events and so on.

 

00;05;35;09 - 00;05;37;18

Speaker 3

So it's a huge, huge operational challenge.

 

00;05;38;09 - 00;05;50;16

Speaker 1

Okay. You're even enticing the Yorkshireman now to spend more time and enjoy himself in Westminster is that that's an incredible statistic a quarter of a million residents a million people footfall per day. Was that.

 

00;05;50;24 - 00;05;51;19

Speaker 3

That's correct. Yep.

 

00;05;51;28 - 00;06;02;05

Speaker 1

Wow. And you talked about the business envelope, I think because I'm a bit of a strange person at times. I like GDP. So what's the what were the GDP of something like that?

 

00;06;02;19 - 00;06;25;13

Speaker 3

Well, I'm in London itself. You know, I don't want to talk too much about the Westminster going on about it, but it's fact, you know, when you compare the GDP of London, 14% is contributed from that four square mile area. So you can imagine how powerful that is. And you've got over 50 flagship companies and, you know, all the major retailers that you see, you will find the Oxford Street especially.

 

00;06;26;01 - 00;06;50;11

Speaker 3

You have all these flagship companies who would love to be in Westminster because of their heritage and because of the industry. So yeah, it's a house, you know, a drive by trade to an extent, and it's, you know, as you said, heart of the country, heart of the capital. And yet it's a huge, huge contributor. What we're talking about, 56 billion contribution while the UK economy.

 

00;06;51;03 - 00;07;12;26

Speaker 1

I'm stunned that those facts in and I guess you know the one thing to take from that is yet you mentioned you know if you do it West Westminster in terms of waste you get away. So I get what you're saying that, you know, this is a great testbed for proving what could actually be successful and achieved. But, you know, we here to talk about the electrification of the Westminster fleet.

 

00;07;12;26 - 00;07;33;07

Speaker 1

That's you know, what we're looking here is we mentioned it in the last LinkedIn light that, yes, you know, people buying electric cars is one thing. Organizations operate fleets dwarfs that number. And that's, you know, something we need to be aware of all the way through. So we're going to be looking, I guess, at the benefits and why you chose to go electric.

 

00;07;33;07 - 00;07;38;19

Speaker 1

But could you give me an idea of the scale and the size of the fleet, you know, like a number now?

 

00;07;39;09 - 00;08;05;23

Speaker 3

Yeah, no, definitely. And although it's as I said, it's a four square mile affected area, but it has gone over 240 vehicles of different specifications while operating, trying to keep the streets clean in Westminster. It ranges from having just under 100 large refuse trucks to 26 dump trucks to a pedestrian operated vehicle. So it's a huge specification, huge mix of vehicles that operate 24 over seven.

 

00;08;05;23 - 00;08;25;27

Speaker 3

I simply I'll give a small example here to say how busy the city is and what sort of operation levels we operate. The litter bins on Oxford Street alone, just one. It's just about two miles. Just about two kilometres stretch as over 100 and been 100 little bins of nearly 200 litre capacity. And these are collected 24 times a day.

 

00;08;26;07 - 00;08;35;02

Speaker 3

So collections are once every hour. So you can imagine the amount of waste and the busy operations that we have to deal with.

 

00;08;35;02 - 00;08;49;07

Speaker 1

That's amazing. I'm stunned again. So everything from the big truck down to a pedal cycle is amazing. Bryony Could you add anything to that, you know, terms of the partnership approach and things?

 

00;08;50;14 - 00;09;13;02

Speaker 2

Yeah, as she mentioned Martyn And this is very much being done in partnership between Veolia and Westminster and we very much done it over a phased approach of introducing these vehicles. So we've worked with used our fleet team to work with many different suppliers to make sure we get the right vehicles for the operation. Because as Edward indicated, there's a lot of waste to collect, there's a lot of expectations.

 

00;09;13;02 - 00;09;32;00

Speaker 2

And therefore we need to make sure that the vehicles can do the mileage, can do the collections requirements for the area. So it's very much been a partnership approach of tried in different vehicles. And it's not just the vehicles itself, it's all of the electrical charging infrastructure that go alongside it to make sure the fleet of vehicles worked.

 

00;09;32;04 - 00;09;47;18

Speaker 2

So we've used some of the specialist teams within Veolia to have a look at that, to make sure we've got the right hardware, but also the right software to make sure these vehicles charge on time so they can do the shifts that are required within that within the city.

 

00;09;49;01 - 00;10;05;10

Speaker 1

Wow. Again, you know, I'm always it's a real rabbit hole, isn't it? You can get yourself down here. Yeah. We want to go electric. We want to get an electric vehicle. Okay. Yeah, that's great. How about. But yeah, how do you charge it and how do you make sure it's charged and capacity to go out and continue doing it?

 

00;10;05;22 - 00;10;26;26

Speaker 1

It's job. There's an awful lot of thinking and planning gone into this, I'm imagining. So I'm you know, my first what's been the most been the payback that you know what's been the impact of all these electric vehicles on sustainability performance? Let's go again. Let's get some more numbers. You know, I'm feeling this LinkedIn live is all the numbers.

 

00;10;27;11 - 00;10;29;21

Speaker 1

So tell me some more facts.

 

00;10;30;14 - 00;10;56;25

Speaker 3

Yeah, as I said, you know, as you rightly said, Martyn, it's a journey. You know, it's to tune in and especially this I mean, if it's just replacing it, like to like corporates, it's quite easy. The industry, the electrification is already there. You can get the right vehicle. And then whatever the capacity is, either when it comes to waste, it's quite challenging because we don't have the like to like replacement vehicles, the kind that like like replacement vehicles.

 

00;10;56;25 - 00;11;32;10

Speaker 3

That's pretty much it's a research on its own to see whatever the technology that's available is feasible to start with. And then the second point, the most complex one is to have the charging infrastructure which the where we build highly dense infrastructure like Westminster and to have those two together that happen obviously with a great partnership as Bryony touched already an improvement, notably the cloud which will challenge you on this because we, we've built up on a lot, we've built a lot of based on this experience from the way the professional with the multi-national, you know, different projects happening across the world as such.

 

00;11;32;13 - 00;12;01;29

Speaker 3

So yeah, it was an incredible journey and a great partnership when it comes back to the numbers and the stats, you know, as I said, as we briefly touched in the introduction, you know, Westminster does have some rates which are whereby is pollution levels across Europe. So that is why having the fewer emission vehicles or zero emission vehicles means they reduce the carbon reduction by 90%, just under 90% across these busy streets.

 

00;12;03;16 - 00;12;38;08

Speaker 1

Whether. Wow, I'm just I'm trying to get these numbers into context. And I'm just seeing and feeling the signs and the scale is and I appreciate it. One of the things that I'm often amazed at, even though I've been in really for a long, long time, is not amazed at what I'm pleased to be able to do is to reach out across the globe to different parts of the world to find out what was the best practice and not just what worked, but what didn't work, because that saves a lot of time, I'd imagine, for yourself in making these things happen.

 

00;12;39;10 - 00;12;58;23

Speaker 2

Yeah, exactly. We've learned a lot of lessons in other places and therefore it's trying to capitalize on that when doing a project like this. So we very much tapped into all of those resources and in developing this solution of an asset to it's said, you know, it's just under 90% carbon reduction, but it's not just nice.

 

00;12;58;23 - 00;13;18;15

Speaker 2

Also, the noise reduction that you have from using these vehicles within the city center. And you know, when you've got an area like Westminster that has such high congestion, there's obviously a lot of vehicles that are parked at different areas around the way. So reducing that noise for the population and also the uses of the city is being really important.

 

00;13;18;27 - 00;13;21;12

Speaker 2

And so yeah, it's twofold really.

 

00;13;21;27 - 00;13;45;03

Speaker 1

We have to forget noise is a pollution in itself isn't a it's not normally there it shouldn't be only it can have a massive impact on people's experiences of a lived area. I'm curious though to you know, we touched on emissions and vehicles, is there a health impact on this as well as we know? Is there a knock on effect?

 

00;13;45;03 - 00;13;47;12

Speaker 1

Is there anything we've got there in terms of studies or.

 

00;13;47;26 - 00;14;25;04

Speaker 3

Yeah, that I mean, based on the numerous studies historically relate that to air quality and there also the impacts on dementia and so on. All those are related. There's a huge study. Somebody said wide spectrum and the studies are going on I suspect. But based on the UK calculations, with the amount of carbon reductions being done in Westminster alone and by upgrading the Street London fleet, for example, Western which operates on a Z, my emission benchmark for the whole of Western is actually done by zero tailpipe emission vehicles, introduced over 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum.

 

00;14;25;15 - 00;14;49;08

Speaker 3

So that's a huge, huge contribution from also that being managed to take the off. And based on those calculations, statistic makes around 50 billion savings on net just over the next ten years of the lifespan. So you can imagine a small change, such a huge impact which that service can be, you know, that funds can be used elsewhere for the betterment of other people and whatever that is.

 

00;14;49;21 - 00;14;58;08

Speaker 3

So, so, you know, everyone can play a great part in the sort of things, you know, simple switching as such. But you do have got, you know, you can make a huge impact.

 

00;14;59;20 - 00;15;28;26

Speaker 1

That's my favorite statistic so far that there's been quite a lot that I've been noting down and I'll be dropping into conversations with people but that 150 billion saving from the NHS for the NHS based on zero emission tailpipe zero tailpipe effect for street cleaning. I mean that is just shows what the impact is. It isn't just about doing one thing for an output, it's every step forward helps everyone and in lots of different ways.

 

00;15;28;26 - 00;15;51;06

Speaker 1

So thank you for bringing that one to our attention. I was impressed. Wow. I'm almost, almost, almost lost for words. But that's never happened in 46 years. I've not had something else to say. So I'm going to go to another question. Moving forwards with a sustainable fleet. Yeah, you know, it's something you've done. But what's been the impact of that?

 

00;15;51;06 - 00;16;06;24

Speaker 1

Because we just talked about that million footfall. We talked about the call we're going to be in residence and that population in the area. So you've got residents, you've got commercial businesses, you've got visitors. Do you know what the impact has been for them?

 

00;16;06;24 - 00;16;28;00

Speaker 3

Yeah. I mean, if I want I don't know, I kind of I'll go first on this one from the report, from the operations perspective and from a residents perspective. Martyn, as I mentioned, you know, this is a city that never sleeps and, you know, and so running 24 by seven. So that involves the street cleaning district, like flushing the A.C. down services, so on.

 

00;16;28;00 - 00;17;00;21

Speaker 3

So these are noisy operations and with the electrification and obviously you could down those and you know, the noises is a great limit. So that allows us to actually do the operations during the night, which directly impacts on the residents, the noise levels and the way how they can comfortably sleep and so on. So this has been a huge, huge success from the residents perspective, from the commercial perspective, from the businesses around like from the tourist, you know, we have a let's put this way, we launched a fleet of 60 small street Lindsey vehicles for the West End in September 2021.

 

00;17;01;02 - 00;17;21;12

Speaker 3

And we up to one year now we haven't received a single complaint will be received tons and tons of positive feedback from everyone else. And actually we have increased a lot of pressure on ourselves because now the rest of the city parts, the other parts, which doesn't have the electric fleet, are now requesting for that their areas to have the same fleet.

 

00;17;22;24 - 00;17;35;15

Speaker 3

So yeah, you know, he's hugely popular, you know, no, it's no brainer, you know, reducing the emissions and reducing the noise and you know, is all around we know from our respect and service provision.

 

00;17;36;05 - 00;17;56;12

Speaker 1

So great for the residents that they're disturbed less. You've got a cleaner quieter workplace for visitors to attend which helps the commercial properties which it's it's really really good. I forgot a really important group of people operating. What about the operatives?

 

00;17;57;11 - 00;18;26;16

Speaker 2

Yeah. And again, it's not only you'll see that please, they've got shiny new vehicles, but that it is more than that are well aware of the journey that we're going on in Veolia with our purpose towards ecological transformation and the impact that obviously having these vehicles has on that. And we doing work with them alongside that like we've just rolled out anti idling campaign, which very much looks at the stats of some of the impacts of operating our vehicles in and around some of these areas.

 

00;18;27;17 - 00;18;47;29

Speaker 2

So I think everyone's very much aware of the impact the vehicles can you have to pollute the area and therefore, you know, for them and I think collectively as a group, we're quite proud of the work we're doing to help support some of the areas like Westminster in reducing some of their emissions. So yeah, it's great that they're on board and it is very much a collective effort.

 

00;18;49;07 - 00;19;17;07

Speaker 1

It's fabulous, fabulous. I'm not struggling again, but I've got I've got another question, I've got another two questions actually in mind and probably a few more deep down. But I want to ask about the relationship now. You've mentioned that. Well, I'm struggling to know when building in Westminster staff working together and then what, what's that partnership, that journey been like.

 

00;19;18;17 - 00;19;21;11

Speaker 1

Bryony do you want to do want to start with that.

 

00;19;21;11 - 00;19;41;00

Speaker 2

Yeah. I mean it's been a very long standing partnership and as I'm sure you're going to be able to talk about, you've been in it much longer than I have. But yeah, it's, it's very important that I think we work together because we need the expertise from Westminster in terms of understanding that communities and very much that direction.

 

00;19;41;00 - 00;20;01;04

Speaker 2

But they're pushing us to make ourselves better as Veolia, and we can also bring some of the leverage of our expertise to the partnership. So it's been great to be able to work together towards tackling some of these challenges. I guess that liberal facing now as we're going on and yeah you know hopefully we can help to do more for Westminster over the next couple of years.

 

00;20;02;07 - 00;20;04;22

Speaker 1

How do you find it out? Is it how's it going for you?

 

00;20;05;16 - 00;20;09;07

Speaker 3

Yeah, no. So it's not for me. I'm all for.

 

00;20;09;07 - 00;20;13;20

Speaker 1

It. Yeah. How, how's it going for you? What's the Facebook relationship status?

 

00;20;14;11 - 00;20;35;09

Speaker 3

Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant. I mean, you know, as I just mentioned, Brian, you just mentioned, you know, we've been working with Veolia before. It was really it was limited. So we are from 1995, I've joined the council in 2004. So since then, it's been very obvious. Obviously, we've got a long partnership and that's one of the platinum contracts from the council's perspective.

 

00;20;35;28 - 00;21;02;04

Speaker 3

Our members love it, our residents love it. There's no issues as such. I mean, you know, this is one service where we have these residents satisfaction levels over 90%, which is incredible compared to any other services provision. So, you know, waste and recycling is a collection where everyone connects to and they see that. They tend to see that as fixed in every single resident of the borough I'm getting over 90% of satisfaction levels is incredible.

 

00;21;02;04 - 00;21;25;26

Speaker 3

So that's a great partnership, not just to show how well we've been doing and just to answer on furthermore on this one box is just to show that from a council perspective, you know, we do build a form based on values, experience and stay, for example, the likes of them working on some different projects with our neighbouring boroughs of Camden, for example, on the compressed natural gas.

 

00;21;25;26 - 00;21;49;19

Speaker 3

And how do you say there's no point in reinventing the wheel? This is what we learned from that. And especially and also the hydrogenated vegetable oil or even production of hydrogen powered vehicles as such. So, you know, it's a huge spectrum. You know, it's not just like, oh, we decided to jump in and get an electric, but actually even it's a journey that started being 2016 on site for the electrification project as such.

 

00;21;49;19 - 00;22;14;04

Speaker 3

And we've been testing numerous technologies even throughout the lockdown, we've been testing numerous technologies and actually, that gave us a bit of a platform to explore further. And then we came to the conclusion of having to be on electric, which as the ultimate solution, and yet now is a great partnership and definitely benefited from the honest experience for going to be on as a national team as such in UK.

 

00;22;14;04 - 00;22;23;13

Speaker 3

And again, we get to build a lot on that and this is a great partnership. So to answer your friends, your Facebook type of friends in a relationship.

 

00;22;23;13 - 00;22;51;24

Speaker 1

I think that's great. We'll update you later. It is good to hear your touch there or something that I have been involved in myself and understand. I'm always, always keen on trying things out the most.

 

00;22;51;25 - 00;22;52;12

Speaker 3

The idea that.

 

00;22;53;03 - 00;22;56;19

Speaker 2

We've lost you, Martyn.

 

00;22;56;19 - 00;22;57;16

Speaker 3

Lost the audio, the.

 

00;22;57;16 - 00;23;26;06

Speaker 1

More different types of vehicles and whether we use vehicles with them. I remember we even tried and we've even looked at refurbishing diesel vehicles into an electric fleet and seeing whether that works and how the view that that's a fuel source in some situations works and you're right, I take your point really strongly, really keenly, that jumping to electric vehicles wasn't something that we switched that was good, switched on.

 

00;23;26;06 - 00;23;49;27

Speaker 1

It was part of a process to find the right solution for the right situation. I'm going to ask my last question. I'm aware at the time and it links onto that. So you've been an early adopter, Westminster City Council of Electric Vehicles, and that's part of your innovative approach. I think you should be applauded for that. Well, if you got a plan next for your sustainability journey at Kings Cross.

 

00;23;50;18 - 00;23;54;18

Speaker 3

Yeah, we lost you there briefly for about ten, 15 seconds. Whatever that.

 

00;23;54;18 - 00;23;54;24

Speaker 1

Was.

 

00;23;55;03 - 00;23;56;01

Speaker 3

To try to get a sense.

 

00;23;56;01 - 00;23;56;04

Speaker 2

Of.

 

00;23;57;18 - 00;24;22;10

Speaker 3

You might have summarized what we've discussed that before. So yeah I mean you're spot on you know, it's a huge journey that we have done so far and you know, like the likes of upcycling, the old vehicles to fully electric and so on. So yeah, it's a huge journey that we've been, I think we're more than happy to shed those knowledge and if anyone wants to use that, I mean, what I'm saying, I've seen some of electric vehicles in a busy urban environment like Westminster.

 

00;24;22;10 - 00;24;45;20

Speaker 3

Probably that might not be the case if you're working somewhere in Wales for example, or in Sheffield we've got highly areas and so on. So one treatment might not fit everyone, but there are huge technologies that's available and that we can, you know, and beyond. Again, as I said, we only work with Sheffield City Council where we are to update what is the right word upcycling is the way we upcycling to end of life.

 

00;24;45;20 - 00;25;10;24

Speaker 3

All the BS and reconstructing the electric in partnership with Sheffield ended by the Innovate UK. So you know that's a huge case study and it's all about what people can take advantage of if they're walking down and have the big one. But yeah, the, you know, the journey is still ongoing. We've managed to find a lot of replacement vehicles full of specialist treatment and break especially, but there are still a bit more vehicles that needs to be found.

 

00;25;10;24 - 00;25;34;22

Speaker 3

So we're still investigating and working with various suppliers across Europe trying to find out the situation. So the next to find out what the Westminster from Westminster waste perspective is to electrify the whole street cleansing and the waste collection, including the recycling fleet to fully electric. So by end of 2025, we would like to reduce our carbon footprint of the fleet transport by 99%.

 

00;25;35;02 - 00;25;56;03

Speaker 3

The reason why I left 1% is the fact that there might be one or two specialist vehicles that probably might not have like to replacement. But that's the that's the project plan that we're working towards immediately that as I said, we launched 60 vehicles last year and fully electric last September. We aim to do another 45 vehicles end of this year and so on.

 

00;25;56;03 - 00;26;03;21

Speaker 3

So you can see the good we've got. That's the plan for us to have a fully electric zero emission Strickland's and wastefully by 2025.

 

00;26;04;27 - 00;26;24;09

Speaker 1

Fabulous ambition fabulous. And I promise that whatever I said in that 10 seconds, you lost me. It was brilliant, insightful, and probably worthy of a Nobel Prize by now. You got anything to add to that and it not the my Nobel Prize. If you got anything to add to the journey going forward with Westminster.

 

00;26;25;24 - 00;26;48;11

Speaker 2

I think it's just to say we've obviously both got net zero ambitions and we're both facing the same climate emergency. So obviously this electric vehicle, Workstream is going to be a key workstream and sort of both of us meeting that. So yeah, it's been great to travel and it's been great to learn those lessons, as she say. And I think we can only keep applying it to all of the rest of the fleet.

 

00;26;48;20 - 00;27;00;21

Speaker 2

And as we diversify this as well across the authorities, it's very much a learning curve and it's very much going to be paramount, I think, to our journey going forward. So yeah, it's been key really.

 

00;27;00;21 - 00;27;17;07

Speaker 1

Thank you both for what's been a fabulous 30 minutes. I've really enjoyed hearing about Westminster City Council and it's progress to date and I think this story Brian Imani agreement really does exemplify ecological transformation.

 

00;27;18;18 - 00;27;22;06

Speaker 2

Exactly. Yeah, it's exactly. I said to myself.

 

00;27;23;01 - 00;27;42;29

Speaker 1

Yo, looks like we've got two words in the company that exactly what we're doing. Well, there we go. Thank you very much for a really insightful discussion. Ed and Brian, I'm going to finish with a promise that if there's anything that we can find to link about with the work, maybe we'll find some case studies that we've done.

 

00;27;43;05 - 00;28;04;25

Speaker 1

We'll share that in the conversation below this broadcast so people can find out more. And I will advertise. Our next scheduled link to live is going to be on Friday, the 23rd of September 11 a.m. onwards, joined by Eleanor Morris from RAP. And we're going to discuss the impact of food waste and how we can all play our part in tackling this issue.

 

00;28;04;25 - 00;28;14;15

Speaker 1

So Bryony and have a great day, thank you for your time and I will look forward to seeing you all of the next LinkedIn live. Thank you.

 

00;28;14;16 - 00;28;15;10

Speaker 3

Goodbye here.

 

00;28;16;01 - 00;28;23;08

Speaker 2

Okay.

 

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The Future is Electric

We are all aware of the Net Zero deadline looming ahead of us - the UK needs to be carbon neutral by 2050. There are many different issues and sectors that we need to focus on to get there, a critical one being transport. This means that establishing a good Electric Vehicle (EV) infrastructure is key, with charging points widely available and quicker charging times made possible.

Of course, the shift to electric applies to all types of vehicles, not just cars. Transport remains the largest source of emissions in the UK - according to UKRI, it accounted for 34% in 2019 - so it's important to address the sector as a whole. This year has seen the number of electric buses increasing, and adapted road systems for electric trucks are even being discussed. The waste sector is no different, and we intend to lead from the front.

We are determined to be the catalyst for change as we expand our electric fleets, continue to develop our unique expertise in Electric Vehicle (EV) charging point infrastructure, and provide Battery Recycling Services that customers can rely on.

 

electric cars charging
Our electric vehicles demonstrate our commitment to ecological transformation and working with our partner, Westminster City Council to lead the transition away from diesel power. By making this change we’re cutting carbon, making the City cleaner and greener, and ensuring the West End is at the forefront of innovation.
Gavin Graveson
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT VEOLIA UK & IRELAND

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