Our customers

Recently, Grundon colleagues and customers from HiBob, Space House and West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospital spent the day volunteering at ZSL London Zoo, helping to improve the porcupine habitat.

The volunteering day focused on sprucing up the enclosure to create a better environment for the animals. Tasks included removing old substrate, like stones and soil, and laying new substrate to tidy the area.

Alongside the hands-on work, the day also gave our customers and colleagues the opportunity to connect outside of the workplace, work together as a team and see the positive impact volunteering can have.

See the day in action below and hear from some of the attendees about what it’s like to volunteer with Grundon.

This video shows just one of the many volunteering opportunities Grundon offers customers throughout the year, giving businesses the chance to support worthwhile causes, strengthen team relations and make a positive impact.

If you are a Grundon customer and would like to book on to one of our upcoming volunteer days, please visit the My Value Hub via the Customer Portal.

At the heart of British motorsport, Silverstone is a 365-day a year business and family leisure destination.

It balances headlining-grabbing events such as the Formula 1 British Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix MotoGP with track days, hotels, restaurants and a business park.

With the number of activities and visitors increasing every year, managing waste and recycling at the circuit is an ever-evolving challenge – which is why Silverstone relies on the expertise of waste management specialist Grundon.

Known for providing innovative solutions and going the extra mile for its customers, Grundon’s latest Silverstone success story has been organising trials of Bigbelly Solar Compactor waste stations. The bins, which come custom-wrapped for different events, are clearly-marked for general waste, mixed recycling, compostables and food waste.

The secret of the Bigbelly bins is their in-built compactor, meaning as the waste reaches a certain level, the compactor automatically compacts the waste down again. This energy efficient operation increases capacity five-fold and dramatically cuts the need for as many collections as usual.

A three-week trial during Silverstone’s Lap of Lights event in December 2025 saw the number of bin collections almost halved (45%) and the equivalent of more than two days of man hours saved.

Grundon’s Stephen Hill, General Manager – Group Commercial Development, says longer term efficiencies up to a 90% reduction in collections can be achieved if collections wait until the bins are more than 80% full.

• Before Bigbelly – 1,104 collections
• During Bigbelly trial – 502 collections (45% reduction)
• Bigbelly collection optimisation – 109 collections (90% reduction)

Stephen explains: “The Bigbelly Clean ^[TM] Software used within the bins provides a huge opportunity to drive behavioural change. Each bin has fill-level sensors that send automatic alerts, via a cloud-based portal, to the operational team once it is nearly full and requires collection. This reduces the need for time-consuming visual checks and saves CO₂ by reducing the number of unnecessary collections.

“During the trials, those visual checks were still taking place and requests were sometimes made for bins to be emptied earlier than was required. This is perfectly understandable, as venues with high footfall have to be sure that bins don’t get to the point where they are full to overflowing.

“By trusting that the sensors recognise the optimum time for collection, the frequency of collections can be greatly reduced and that is all part of the learning process. The Bigbelly technology adds real value because it allows you to deliver immediate change and, longer term, by tracking the data, you can build up a picture of where and when the bins are most likely to fill up, which helps you manage future requirements.”

Leyland Lamotta, Silverstone’s Waste and Recycling Manager, said: “Our Grundon account manager James Standen offered us a Bigbelly demonstration and as soon as I saw the bins it was a real wow moment.

“The trials went swimmingly well – seeing a 200 litre bin with the potential to hold 600 litres of waste was impressive and the savings achieved were a great result.

“The graphics really helped draw the public’s attention and the greater engagement meant more people put their waste in – the bins even played us Christmas songs too!”

Once a bin had reached capacity, an email alert was automatically sent to both Leyland and the on-site manager from cleaning services contractor CleanEvent, which was managing cleaning for the Lap of Lights event.

Silverstone’s own waste team then emptied the bins, taking the compacted waste to the service yard for collection by Grundon and recycling or reprocessing.

Leyland continues: “We have a WhatsApp group and, because Lap of Lights is held in a relatively contained area, it was so easy to manage the collections. The bins also have a traffic light system which turns red to signal it is nearing capacity and that worked perfectly well for our teams in the small area we were using.

“I have great faith in these bins, utilised correctly and with the right people, in place I can see they will make a dramatic change.”

Since the initial trials, Bigbelly waste stations have been installed at Kart Silverstone, a new state-of-the-art karting circuit that opened in March 2026, and discussions are under way for further future, larger installations.

Grundon has provided waste management services to Silverstone for the last four decades and is tireless in its goal to continually improve waste and recycling.

Over the last three years alone, recycling rates for the Formula 1 British Grand Prix have increased from 31.6% in 2023 to 57.6% in 2025. The increase comes after a series of new initiatives including having a waste team on site 24/7 during the event and the provision of electric waste collection vehicles to help lower CO₂ emissions.

We recently visited Marwell Zoo to carry out a Waste Composition Analysis (WCA), a hands-on study of a business’s waste to see how materials are being disposed of.

As part of our service, Grundon hosts and delivers WCAs for organisations looking to better understand and improve their waste management practices. Its purpose is to help organisations gain a clearer understanding of what their waste is made up of and identify opportunities to improve recycling and reduce general waste.

During this WCA, we identified that 11% of the waste sampled was made up of compostable materials, which were being disposed of as general waste. Without a dedicated recycling route in place, this meant material with environmental value was being lost rather than recovered and processed into compost.

As a result, Marwell Zoo are introducing Grundon’s compostables recycling service, ensuring all compostable packaging on site is separated and recycled into nutrient-rich compost, supporting the zoo’s wider sustainability goals.

Check out the video below to see our Waste Composition Analysis in action and discover how this service could help your business uncover hidden opportunities to improve recycling performance, reduce costs and strengthen sustainability outcomes.

On 11-12 July 2025, we joined Ascot Racecourse to celebrate all things sustainability at their Racing To Zero Summer Mile Weekend.

In 2022 Ascot Racecourse appointed Grundon as its dedicated waste management and recycling partner and since then we have seen great improvements in their recycling performance.

Grundon were delighted to be invited to join Ascot’s Racing To Zero Summer Mile Weekend, where we highlighted how waste and recycling is managed on site.

At the event, we had two stands, hosted by colleagues from across our Commercial team.

Indoors, we had a digital screen showcasing various initiatives Ascot have in place to support their sustainability goals. One example is sending their food waste to Anaerobic Digestion facilities where it’s transformed into nutrient-rich bio-fertiliser used by UK farmers. On the stand, we also offered interactive activities designed to engage Ascot colleagues and visitors – complete with the chance to win prizes.

Meanwhile outdoors, visitors were able to get a closer look at one of our electric waste collection vehicles, which is powered by non-recyclable waste collected from Ascot Racecourse and other customers.

Since partnering with Grundon, Ascot’s recycling performance has seen remarkable progress.

In June 2022, their recycling rate stood at 33.7%. Now, with a similar volume of overall waste, that figure has increased to over 60%.

Watch our video with Alex Grant, Sustainability Manager, to see the Grundon stands in action and hear more about how the event went!

Focused on three waste streams that are traditionally more difficult to recycle – compostables, paper towels and coffee cups – Grundon’s new RecyclePlus service guarantees 100% specialist recycling, providing organisations with another big tick in the box towards their sustainability targets.

Grundon’s Stephen Hill says: “While compostables such as plant-based cutlery and food trays have become increasingly popular – especially since the ban and restrictions on single-use plastics – the opportunities for correct disposal of these items aren’t widely available.

“The same applies to coffee cups and paper towels*, all three of these items need specialist reprocessing and, as a result, they all too often end up in general waste.

“RecyclePlus solves that problem by offering a disposal route for all three products via one simple collection service. Not only will customers significantly increase their recycling rates, they will benefit by reducing the weight of their general waste collections and their waste data will be even more detailed, helping to both meet waste targets and shape future sustainability programmes.”

*paper towel collection service only applies to Tork paper towels.

NHS trusts have the potential to achieve major carbon savings with Grundon’s new reusable sharps container service.

The service, developed in partnership with Inpress Precision, specialist manufacturer to the medical and healthcare sector, uses Sharpak Zero™ reusable containers. These save an average 87% of the carbon used within the lifetime of a container, thereby preventing millions of single-use containers being disposed of each year.

A recent trial at Hammersmith Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, saw Sharpak Zero containers installed in two ICU units, which were chosen due to the high volume of sharps used. With staff training provided by Grundon and Inpress Precision, in just eight weeks the Trust saved 1.26 tonnes of CO2e, compared to disposal of its existing single-use sharps containers.

Innovative ideas are key to cutting carbon and, in 2023, Grundon launched the UK’s first proven nationwide inhaler return and recycling scheme.

With some 73 million inhalers dispensed every year by the NHS – estimated to account for 4% of all NHS CO 2 emissions – the ability to recycle inhalers and repurpose the greenhouse gases they contain, is expected to deliver significant carbon savings.

Successfully trialled with a number of NHS Trusts and Health Boards across England and Wales, the service has already won a prestigious Sustainability Award from the British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association (BAMA).

Grundon is boosting its recycling capabilities by harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

With an AI robotic picker installed at its Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Bishop’s Cleeve in 2022, near Cheltenham, Grundon is speeding ahead with improved sorting and and recovery of HDPE and PET plastic.

Deploying sorting technology means greater volumes of raw materials can be captured and returned into the circular economy, ready to be made into new products.

The picker can target and pick up to 80 items a minute!