CONTRACT CLEANING Transforming recycling
West One Shopping Centre has partnered with Churchill, Weightron and Carrot to implement a digital waste tracking platform. Hannah Dales, Head of Environment at Churchill Group, explains how the platform offers real-time data collection, improved recycling rates and potential cost savings.
At Churchill, we’re always looking for practical, innovative solutions that deliver real results on the ground – and our work at West One Shopping Centre is a great example of that in action.
Located on Bond Street in London, with an annual footfall of 22m people, West One is a busy and high- profile retail destination with complex operational needs. Managing waste for a site like this isn’t easy. Multiple retailers, high volumes of foot traffic, diverse waste streams and physical constraints behind the scenes all make consistent waste segregation challenging. Yet getting this right is crucial in order to reduce environmental impact and also to manage costs, improve reporting and ensure compliance with new legislation.
Why we needed change
Before this project, waste management at West One faced issues common across the retail sector. Inconsistent waste reporting made it difficult to measure true volumes or benchmark performance. Without clear data, it was hard for the management and retailers to identify opportunities to reduce contamination or improve recycling rates.
Multiple tenants also made fair cost allocation tricky. Contamination in shared bins could result in charges being passed onto tenants who were doing the right thing, causing frustration and limiting buy-in.
At the same time, retailers were under growing pressure to improve sustainability credentials, both to meet their own corporate ESG goals and to satisfy increasingly environmentally conscious customers. All this was set against the backdrop of the Simpler Recycling legislation, which mandates consistent separation of waste streams across the UK from March 2025. West One wanted to get ahead of these requirements, not just to ensure compliance, but to demonstrate leadership in sustainable retail.
Simpler Recycling, introduced by DEFRA, requires businesses to segregate waste into defined streams – including dry mixed recycling, paper and card, food waste and general waste – using dedicated containers to reduce contamination. It’s a major shift designed to improve the quality of recycling across the country.
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For a multi-tenanted site like West One, this created an urgent need for a clear, fair and easy-to-use system. We knew that simply asking retailers to do better wouldn’t work unless they had the right tools, training and incentives in place.
Collaborating for success
That’s why our approach focused on genuine partnership and shared goals. Churchill worked closely with the landlord and waste data technology company Carrot to design a solution tailored to the centre’s specific challenges.
Our first step was a thorough review of waste management processes. We analysed individual retailer waste flows, identified common contamination risks and assessed physical constraints such as narrow back-of-house corridors and limited storage space. We wanted to understand where waste was being generated, how it was being handled and what barriers existed to better segregation.
We engaged directly with retailers, listening to their concerns and practical limitations. This collaborative approach built trust and made it easier to secure their buy-in when new processes were introduced.
We also worked closely with Veolia, West One’s waste management partner, right from the start. By involving them early, we ensured they could handle the new segregated waste streams effectively and that all our data stayed aligned. This kind of supplier collaboration is essential to making change stick.
Digital innovation at the heart of the strategy
A central pillar of the project was the introduction of the Carrot digital waste management platform. This system, proven in retail parks in Norway, combines intuitive software with integrated weighing hardware (Weightron scales).
Here’s how it works in practice at West One: when retailers dispose of waste, they use a digital scale with a touchscreen interface to register the type and weight. The data syncs automatically to the Carrot dashboard in real time, both for the operations team and for individual retailers.
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