At Ruxley, being a garden centre, we recognise the importance of our environment and the planet as a whole. We believe that ‘sustainability’ should be embedded in our business, through the way in which we operate, the culture of our team and in supporting the local community. It's a journey on which we are continually learning as to how we can improve and we commit to making positive changes.
Solar Panels
Pictured Above: In November 2015 we had the installation of 723 solar panels which generate around 153,637.50 KWH, saving around 27.7% of previous grid usage.
Renewable energy first
Across the garden centre, any viable and available roof space is covered with solar panels. These solar panels generate electricity that both powers a lot of Ruxley Manor Garden Centre and any surplus is then passed back into the national grid. For our other energy needs, we try to opt for clean, green energy from our suppliers.
With each new development at Ruxley, we always look at ways we can further our renewable electricity generation to rely less on fossil fuels and more on green energy.
Our sustainability strategy is an ongoing journey of learning, implementation and impacting. But our successes so far include:
We recycle our cardboard
We recycle our plastic
We recycle our glass bottles from The Mulberry Tree
We have recycling bins on the shop floor for customer use
We have on-site a 180.75 kWp solar panel system, comprising of 723 panels, was installed in 2015, generating roughly 153,637.50 kWh per year
Biomass boiler used to burn waste wood, reducing reliance on both the oil boiler and the need for wood skips
All lights have been replaced with LEDs, with motion sensors in the offices
Bike racks are provided for our team and customers
We promote a Cycle to Work scheme for staff
The majority of company vehicles are electric
Proudly PlanetMark Certified
We are Planet Mark certified and each year we measure our sustainability through their scheme, continue striving to reduce our carbon footprint.
Planet Mark is an internationally recognised sustainability certification for every type of organisation, for real estate and for products. A Planet Mark certification recognises continuous improvement, encourages action and builds an empowered community of like-minded individuals who make a world of difference.
In this crucial Decade of Action, we want to ensure that we are a force for good: positively transforming society and the planet by measuring our own impact on the environment. Over the next year we will be working towards reducing our carbon emissions, and we want to share this journey with our community to encourage others to join us.
Through Planet Mark we are protecting an area of endangered rainforest thanks to Cool Earth; a charity working alongside rainforest communities to halt deforestation. Our pledge through Cool Earth goes directly towards supporting the Asháninka community in Central Peru. Through our commitment to Planet Mark we are also helping the Eden Project – an educational charity building connections with each other and the living world, exploring how we can work together towards a better future.
Each and every one of you plays an important role in our sustainability commitments, and Planet Mark will help to embed sustainability in our business culture so that we can make continual progress. We look forward to sharing our sustainability achievements with the wider community. We encourage you to get in touch if you have any questions, suggestions or would like to get involved.
Sustainability is more than just an environmental issue, here at Ruxley we are integrating sustainability into the way we operate as the future is worth investing in. Sustainability will positively affect everyone and everything on our planet, so we’re doing what we can to help make that happen.
Although we are constantly making the conscious effort to eliminate plastic from our store, we still have a long way to go until we completely eliminate single use plastics at Ruxley Manor. But we are proud of what we have achieved so far.
We’re making conscious efforts across the shop floor to also reduce plastic.
Our Mulberry Tree restaurant is making the conscious effort to eliminate the use of plastic. The Mulberry Tree has made a bold move to try and minimise the amount of single use plastic we have within the restaurant.
November 2015 saw the installation of 723 solar panels which generate around 153,637.50 KWH, saving around 27.7% of previous grid usage. (It is also the equivalent of electricity needed for an electric car to travel 451,875 miles each year!)
In 2013 a new biomass boiler was installed on site which allows us to turn our unwanted pallets and timber into energy that now supplies heat and hot water to both the Food Hall and The Mulberry Tree Restaurant.
Our marketing team is cutting down on the plastics that they use on a daily basis. They’re aiming to transition from laminated and plastic based signage to recyclable options, which will save single use plastics over the course of each year.
We work closely with Veolia (waste company) to ensure general waste is recycled, minimising the wastage that gets sent to landfill. All of our green waste is composted on site.
80% of wood is recycled by either being sent to our local recycling depot, most wooden pallets are returned to our suppliers to re-use and any excess or waste timber is used in our Biomass Heater to provide heat and hot water to The Mulberry Tree Restaurant and the Food Hall.
With the investment of a cardboard compacting machine in 2008 we are now able to recycle 93% of our cardboard waste. All of our cardboard (around 375 tonnes a year) is baled in our compactor and sent to a Kentish paper mill for recycling.
Ruxley Manor recognises that the use of peat in growing media has a limited future; we feel it is essential to offer a peat-free option to limit the exploitation of new peat bogs. We are commited to be peat free by 2024.
We take an active role in encouraging our customers to recycle water in their gardens by offering a range of water-saving water butts.
We also have an on-site disposal of customers compost bags which are all picked up by a local supplier to be recycled. We also have a ground coffee recycling station in the Mulberry Tree Restaurant. Customers can help themselves to ground coffee which is great to add to composts piles or straight to the soil to use as a fertilizer.
Also in our Outdoor Plant Department we offer our plant trays to customers – a great bit of upcycling for planting out kinder plants.
Currently we are working with suppliers to introduce non-black pots in our outdoor plants department which are kerbside recyclable, black pots are currently non recyclable due to the carbon pigment they are made with. Working with our local councils we are making sure that our plant pots are kerbside recyclable and therefore are not a single use plastic within our business.
At present Ruxley Manor’s aim is to recycle as much as possible and to continue to reduce the amount that is sent to land fill sites.
Here at Ruxley, we want to give back to the local community.
That’s why each year we appoint a nominated charity that we support through raising their profile and raising funds.
We also run the “Ruxley in Bloom” gardening competition, a great local initiative to promote gardening within the community; whether that be residential, businesses, schools or allotments.
Please click on the links below to find out more.
Ruxley Manor Garden Centre
Maidstone Road
Sidcup
Kent
DA14 5BQ
