SUSTAINABILITY SPINNING FOR SUCCESS
Putting innovation, sustainability and service at the heart of student laundry is the key to successful operations, says David Wheatcroft, MD of Circuit.
Each year, millions of litres of water and tonnes of carbon are used to power student washing and drying machines across the UK – and it’s having a big impact on the planet.
For facilities managers who want to demonstrate they’re taking steps to improve the energy efficiency of the university sites they oversee, and need to demonstrate they’re finding new ways of operating more sustainably, a modern, fit-for-purpose solution is required.
To support this, there are new platforms and innovations that tap into students’ on-the-go lifestyles alongside their growing demand for sustainable solutions – all the while supporting facilities teams to further streamline the support they can offer students.
Laundry technology designed
for convenience Today’s students are digital natives. They’ve been able to access apps for most of their lives, so there is almost an expectation to have a digital solution in place for every task they undertake. We believe this should apply to laundry, too, so we created a tool to facilitate both remote useability and students’ day-to-day spending preferences.
Via our Circuit Go app, students can check machine availability in real-time and book a machine for use at a specific time, meaning they’re able to undertake their laundry requirements as and when it suits them. The platform gives users two independent ways to pay for their laundry – either by topping up their account, or by using new contactless wall terminals on the machines, compatible with both Apple Pay and Google Pay.
The technology demonstrates our ability to understand our users’ lifestyles and make laundry simpler and more accessible for them. For facilities managers, knowing this efficient solution is in place offers additional peace of mind.
Unlocking sustainable power We provide our laundry equipment and services to over 3,000 university locations in the UK, so something that’s important to us is to be a truly transformational force in the market when it comes to reducing water and carbon consumption. Digitisation helps achieve that, and our platform truly comes into its own when you consider what it enables universities to do from a sustainability and environmental perspective.
Our in-house team of technical experts monitor and analyse the data in the back end of our app, and modify laundry cycles to reduce water and energy usage – up to around half a kilowatt per cycle. With more than six million cycles taking place using our machinery each
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year, this could achieve a potential carbon saving of three million KWh, equating to 621 tonnes of CO2.
With today’s students known for being more environmentally conscious than any generation before them, and facilities managers needing to demonstrate they’re taking steps to minimise their carbon and water footprints, it creates a compelling proposition with potential to be significantly impactful.
Service still the strongest asset The app also offers huge benefits for site teams looking to make laundry facilities as reliable and user-friendly as possible for students.
For example, it helps reduce operational downtime and maintain the quality of our machines because the technology enables us to automatically detect faults which can then be diagnosed remotely. Should a fault occur with a machine on one of your sites, the nearest of our 400 engineers nationwide receives a notification to attend, cutting down wait times. This also reduces the engineer’s travel time – positively impacting our – and the university’s – carbon footprint. Once there, the engineer can use the data from the app to get a greater understanding of a machine’s technical issues, increasing first-time fix rates.
Today’s laundry users want reliable, impactful, value- for-money solutions designed with their preferences in mind. And for facilities teams, what's important is achieving the ultimate reassurance that your student laundry provider prioritises innovation, sustainability and efficiency. We’re at the centre of that movement, ensuring both students and facilities teams can focus on what really matters to them, while we handle the rest.
www.circuit.co.uk twitter.com/TomorrowsFM
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