LONDON STANSTED’S TREE GIVEAWAY DURING BIODIVERSITY WEEK

London Stansted Airport is celebrating its Biodiversity Week by handing out more than 3,000 silver birch saplings and highlighting some of its year-round environmental work.

The initiative, which follows from 2018’s successful Recycling Week where 2,000 reusable cups were handed to staff, aims to inform the thousands of colleagues across London Stansted of the environment team’s efforts, from the creation of habitat areas to recycling drives and environment protection.

As part of London Stansted’s sustainable growth, last year the airport built a new habitat creation area, made up of four new ponds and green areas.

Schools and parish councils within 10 miles have also been invited to plant trees, and staff can take them home if they sign a pledge to take care of it for at least two years while it acclimatises. All trees will be marked on a map to see how far and wide they’re planted.

The airport’s environmental manager, Martin Churley, says: “The aim of Biodiversity week is to highlight all the good work the business is doing to maintain and improve our biodiversity across the airport site.

“We hope to get staff engaged in our work, and following the huge uptake of free cups last year we wanted to be even more ambitious with our tree giveaway.

“At London Stansted Airport we have also made a commitment to be zero net loss to biodiversity, so initiatives such as this help ensure we not only achieve this, but that the airport grows in a sustainable way.”

Listing its environmental credentials, Stansted notes that its operations have been carbon neutral since 2016/17, 75% of all its waste is recycled (none going to land fill sites) and that 100% of its electricity comes from renewable sources since it was acquired by MAG.

Other highights include:

• Stansted has a higher proportion (53%) of passengers using public transport percentage than any other UK airport while all staff get an 80% reduction in the cost of public transport with 33% of them using public transport for work journeys.

• London Stansted is Environmental standard ISO14001 accredited and the first UK airport to meet the energy management standard ISO50001

• Surrendered items such as food, toiletries and toys which can’t be taken through security are sent to local foodbanks