EnviroMall - The first enviromental partnership for shopping centres - launches at BCSC on 8 November
The Mall, the UK’s community shopping centre brand, is announcing EnviroMall, a partnership between it and leading environmental organisations, at this year’s British Council for Shopping Centres’ conference in Manchester.
EnviroMall has been conceived to improve the shopping centre industry’s environmental performance through a tailored accreditation scheme. It will encourage the sharing of best practice and joined up working across all areas of shopping centres on this singularly important issue, particularly with retailers who collectively have been hard to engage before now. On a practical level it will also provide the opportunity to trial breakthrough thinking and technologies in complex testing grounds with the ultimate goal of achieving a Self Sustainable Specification – S3 – for each individual centre throughout the UK.
The partnership is made up of Envirowise, Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme, with the Carbon Trust, The Mall and Upstream, which sits of the partnership steering committee. Each organisation brings knowledge and skills in their areas of expertise, which will be pooled to devise the shopping centre specific accreditation.
Ken Ford, Chief Executive of The Mall, said,
“Protecting the environment is the big issue facing society today. The shopping centre industry can adopt a position of leadership and influence, touching as it does so many people’s lives, whether shoppers, retailers or investors. The time is now to take all the good work The Mall and others are doing in this area and galvanise it into an independently accredited industry standard… EnviroMall. We see EnviroMall as the necessary next step to call others in the business to action. There is a need for this standard for us to all march behind and we hope that other owner/operators will welcome this initiative and be encouraged to join EnviroMall.”
Toby Crewe of the Carbon Trust added,
"We are looking forward to sharing our experience and expertise gained through our work with a range of businesses, to help reduce the carbon footprint of shopping centres.“
Envirowise retail specialist Chris Hodgson said,
“Our work to provide resource efficiency advice to the retail sector has included the management of environmental campaigns for a wide range of managed shopping centres in England. We encourage centres to work in partnership with their retailers to implement a range of resource saving and waste reducing measures.
“We are therefore delighted at the prospect of working with the Mall and the other EnviroMall partners as part of this forward-looking initiative. EnviroMall will enable us to work with around 10 per cent of the UK’s town centre shopping centres, with the owner/operator’s absolute support. The EnviroMall approach should lead to significant improvements in environmental performance.”
Martin Fry of the Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme, added,
“We have for sometime wanted to undertake a review of the energy usage of a high street or shopping centre in the UK with all the different sizes and types of shops with a variety of energy needs. EnviroMall not only offers us that opportunity across all 23 of The Mall’s shopping centres – providing invaluable data that will really help us to understand what goes on in these centres – but it gives us access to over 250 million shoppers each year to help raise awareness.”
Matthew Tippett of Upstream – the strategic sustainability consultancy specialising in property – which sits on the partnership steering group, also said,
“Upstream is working with the partnership in an advisory capacity to impart the expertise we have gained through our own Sustainability Benchmarking service for different property types. As a consultancy, we have been working to improve businesses’ impact on the environment and communities for over 9 years and have seen the private sector’s approach shift dramatically in the past year. This initiative represents a significant opportunity to spark more sharing of good and best practice and we hope it will foster much-needed ways of engaging with the occupiers of property. Ultimately, Upstream are keen to promote work that drives the property industry forward and makes a meaningful contribution to major challenges, such as climate change.”
The EnviroMall partnership will be working closely over the coming months to devise the accreditation system. For more details and news please visit www.enviromall.co.uk , which goes live on 8 November, the day of EnviroMall’s launch.
For further information regarding EnviroMall please contact:
Jessica Stewart/Jessie Bigus
Redwood Consulting on 020 7828 5553
Notes to Editors:
About EnviroMall partners:
The Mall
The Mall is the leading owner and operator of community shopping centres in the UK. The Mall currently has assets of £3.045 billion in 23 shopping centres, establishing The Mall as the UK’s community shopping centre brand. The Mall Fund is a specialist property fund managed by Capital & Regional and Morley Fund Management.
Shopping as it should be
For further information, visit www.themall.co.uk
Envirowise
Envirowise delivers a valuable programme of confidential advice to UK businesses. This advice enables businesses to improve profitability and reduce environmental impact. Independent, practical and proven guidance is available through a helpline, information resources and on site visits delivered by a national team of expert advisors. Each solution is driven by the specific needs of individual firms to genuinely improve their business practices, profitability and competitiveness. Since 1994, Envirowise has helped UK industry save over £1 billion.
The Envirowise programme is available to any UK business, completely free of charge. For more information visit www.envirowise.gov.uk or call 0800 585 794.
The Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme
The Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme “EEAS” is the UK's only independent award recognising achievements in reducing energy use by leading organisations in industry, commerce and the public sector. The EEAS is part of the Carbon Trust’s portfolio of offerings and is managed by the National Energy Foundation with accreditation awarded by the Energy Institute.
Upstream also sits on the partnership steering committee:
Upstream is a strategic sustainability consultancy.
We believe that the built environment has a crucial role to play in shaping a sustainable future. We aim to help our clients – all of whom work with property – to manage the economic, social and environmental issues they face in ways that add value to their businesses and to the communities in which they operate. Through doing so, our goal is to contribute to the sustainable use of land and property assets for the wider good.
At Upstream we combine a commitment to sustainability with an in-depth knowledge of the property sector, to translate concepts into useful advice that supports everyday business activities, through the following service areas:
- Benchmarking - setting standards to improve performance
- Intelligence - important issues explained
- Communications
- Strategy and Management - structuring your approach
- Capacity Building
- Research & Advocacy - getting to the heart of issues
For details please visit www.upstreamstrategies.co.uk
