Awards announced for Square Mile’s green champions

The City of London Corporation has marked three decades of working towards a greener Square Mile by doling out awards to the City’s clean energy champions.

Estate agent Savills scooped the Air and Quality Climate Action nod having saved 3,780kw of energy across 13 months as part of their ‘Go Dark’ project to reduce out-of-hours light pollution.

Asset management Barings and Nomura were jointly recognised for ‘moving towards a circular economy’ through initiatives of recycling 78,000 catering gloves and reducing general waste by 39 per cent since 2019/20.

Legal offices had a good day at the awards, with Addleshaw Goddard taking the Large Chairman’s Cup for reducing internal mail services by 131,000 miles.

Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang, meanwhile, won the ‘becoming a plastic-free city’ title for creating soil from compostable disposables such as knives, forks and napkins that is then used on their rooftop garden.

Chair of the City Corporation’s Port Health and Environmental Services Committee, Mary Durcan, said:

“For three decades, we’ve been celebrating City businesses who are leading the way when it comes to cutting waste, and reusing, and recycling. Things have come a long way since we started our mission in 1994.

“These choices, are not only beneficial to people who work for these companies, but also the many millions of people who live in, work in, and visit the City.”

The City Corporation said it has slashed its own annual carbon emissions by 66 per cent and energy consumption by 21 per cent since 2018 and has been using 100 per cent renewable electricity since the same year. 

The organisation is also the first UK authority to run a fully zero-emission fleet of refuse vehicles and aims to have a fully electric vehicle fleet by 2025.

Any business within the Square Mile can apply to become part of the scheme. Membership for the 2024 to 2025 scheme is now open and can be made by visiting www.ccaslondon.co.uk.