Zero waste to landfill

For every business the true cost of waste is far higher than the cost of disposing of it. Wasted energy, raw materials, consumables, handling costs, management time and potential legal liabilities all make an impact.

Tube Lines tries hard to leave nothing to waste. In 2007 we set a new standard for this with our zero waste to landfill pilot which saw almost 99 per cent of waste from the slope restoration project at Kingsbury reused and recycled. Read more about this in our case study.

Underpinning our business is an approach known as whole life asset management. This means that we design, build, maintain and manage the entire infrastructure – we are responsible for everything that happens to our assets throughout the entirety of their lifespan. As part of this, we seek to ensure that the materials we use are as sustainable as possible throughout their lifecycle. This is fundamental to the way we improve the condition of our assets, boost performance and meet targets cost-effectively. Successes in 2007 included the use of vandal-beating film protecting the glass on carriage windows and working with mainline rail engineers to develop a tool called IMPACT that predicts how track will perform and deteriorate in years to come – and how much investment will be needed.

Waste management

Distribution Services Management, our in-house road haulage and waste management facility, runs its own waste vehicles and manages subcontractors that collect a variety of waste from across the network. In 2007 it sent 49 per cent of skip and compactor waste from depots and 76 per cent of track waste to recycling facilities. All the segregated paper we collect from trains and stations was sold to a paper manufacturer for recycling. We continue to focus efforts to provide robust data for waste from our upgrade projects and hope to report against this next year.

Tube Lines is a registered waste carrier and we hold a number of Environment Agency licences that allow us to collect and store waste trackside and at depots and stations, to facilitate recycling and reuse. 134 locations are registered with the Environment Agency as producers of hazardous waste such as fluorescent tubes or oily rags.

Paper recycling

We continue to collect and segregate newspaper waste left behind by customers. This waste paper is collected by our dedicated recycling vehicle and sold to Ideal Waste Paper Co Ltd for recycling. As the free afternoon newspapers increased their circulation in 2007, we had to step up our efforts to keep the trains clear of litter. We introduced Sunday collections and almost doubled the overall amount of paper collected to over 2,000 tonnes, compared to 806 tonnes in 2006.

We are now removing an average 9 tonnes a day on the dedicated recycling route. This activity raised £16,500 for Tube Lines' Community Support Fund, which was used to supplement employees’ efforts to support good causes. We also looked into opportunities for implementing a customer waste segregation trial, sharing our ideas for installing additional bins at stations with London Underground’s Environment Manager.

Reducing paper use

In 2006 we set a target to reduce paper use at head office and saved 150 trees worth of paper. In 2007 we extended this target company-wide and achieved a staggering 34 per cent reduction of white A4 paper, saving many more trees. Jon Miller, Facilities Support Manager, explains: “We exceeded the paper reduction objective and all expectations through a combination of changes to our printers, persuading people to change their habits and monitoring stationery more closely.” Sandra Hunt, Mail Room Manager, adds: “For example, paper is no longer freely available but has to be ordered from us and printers are loaded by us throughout the day so that we can track paper use.”

We also established procedures for disposing of waste electrical and electronic equipment to comply with new regulations that came into force in 2007. We continue to recycle toner cartridges and IT equipment and send old mobile phones and blackberries to CRISP’s (Community Recycling in Southwark Project) Phones for Safety initiative. This is a charity supported by Victim Support and the police, that turns second-hand mobile phones into reconfigured '999 only' phone alarms for victims of domestic violence in London.

In June, the Facilities and IT teams organised a tidy Friday at our main offices, which resulted in the removal and recycling of about three tonnes of rubbish.

Innovation

We continue to look across the company for opportunities to improve the way we do things. In 2007 we implemented a number of innovations which improve efficiency and reduce materials consumption and waste, such as our new mobile wheel lathe at Stratford Market depot. This will extend the life of train wheels and track.

Ideas come from across the company and we have won various awards for innovation. We were a double award-winner at The Railway Forum /Modern Railways Industry Innovation Awards in 2007. Tube Lines’ current analyser, a handheld device which helps to identify faults in track current flow that can cause signal failures, won Small Scale Innovation of the Year. Its inventor, Tube Lines’ Technical Officer Nick Healey, won Innovator of the Year.

Designed for sustainability

The occasions when we build from scratch present an ideal opportunity for innovative and sustainable design. Construction began in 2007 on our new Stratford train crew accommodation building, which will have a green roof, sheep's wool insulation, flexible floor design and sustainably sourced timber cladding. This makes it the most sustainable building on the Underground. It was shortlisted for the 2008 HSBC Rail Environmental Innovation of the Year Award.

 

• Environmental impacts
• Noise
• Waste and materials
• Pollution
• Wildlife
• Energy and utilities
• Climate change