Lakeside Village Goes Green

Lakeside Village has dedicated the month of March to kickstarting its drive to do as much as possible to reduce its impact on the environment.
Last month, the leading retail outlet unveiled some exciting new environmental pledges for 2020  including increasing its overall recycling rate to 80%, working with local businesses to clean up and maintain the Lakeside area and introducing additional recycling streams such as collections for batteries and printer cartridges.
And now the centre has announced that March will be its ‘Go Green’ month as it looks to introduce a number of green initiatives to make these pledges become a reality.
Plans include joining forces with other businesses in the Lakeside area to spearhead a neighbourhood litter pick, providing more general recycling bins across the centre as well as dedicated chewing gum bins and used battery and cartridge drop off points, promoting initiatives that the centre’s stores are already involved in such as Costa that accepts any brand takeaway cups for recycling and encouraging more staff and shoppers to use the bike racks on offer.
There will also be free cotton shopping bag giveaways, continued support for Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice’s Bag it for Bluebell scheme where Lakeside Village customers can donate unwanted clothes, shoes and toys and the planting of a wildflower garden on site.
Di Rodgers, centre manager at Lakeside Village, said: “The team here at Lakeside Village is really passionate about doing more to help the environment and community we are part of and as such we came up with some pledges for this year that we are really committed to achieving. But we really wanted to demonstrate that these were not just words written on a piece of paper and that we would be taking firm action.
“As such we thought the arrival of Spring would be a great time to kick start our activities, so we have made March our ‘Go Green’ month giving us all a clear focus to make some real changes.
“We’ve come up with some exciting new things like organising a litter pick and planting a wild flower garden as well as getting better at pushing existing initiatives like our bike racks, what our stores are already doing and supporting campaigns such as Bluebell Wood’s Bag It scheme. We are confident our customers will support us as we strive to do all we can to enhance what we already do and reduce our impact on the surrounding area.”