OCS wins contract to supply waste management services to Harvey Shopping Centre

04 March 2013

OCS has won a waste management services contract with the Harvey Centre in Harlow, Essex. Under the five-year contract, OCS will provide the centre with all of its waste services through a zero landfill solution.

Waste, such as card, plastic, coat hangers, metal, pallets and mixed recyclables will be taken directly for recycling. Meanwhile, all other waste will be removed from the centre where it will be sorted to extract other recyclable items. The small remainder will be disposed of through energy recovery.

This means that the 333 tonnes of waste produced by the centre annually will be diverted from landfill. Food waste segregation is planned for 2013/14 to further increase the centre’s green sustainability programme.

The Savills-managed Harvey Centre boasts 350,000 sq ft of retail space with five anchor stores including Marks & Spencer, Tesco, BHS, Primark and Wilkinson, receives 13 million visitors a year and has 726 car parking spaces. A cinema is set to open within 18 months.

Harvey Centre operations manager, Simon Plumb, said: "We're always looking for innovative solutions to reduce our impact on the environment and the solutions put forward by OCS fit the bill exactly. While ambitious, they presented a very well-reasoned action plan that demonstrated how they would achieve their targets.”

“We are delighted to be able to introduce OCS WasteLine to the Harvey Shopping Centre having successfully introduced our waste management services at other shopping centres,” said Martin Gammon, managing director for OCS Group UK & Europe. “We look forward to working with the centre to further improve its environmental credentials.”

The announcement follows the news that the Birmingham NEC, where OCS provides a variety of soft services including waste management, has reached zero waste to landfill status two years ahead of schedule.