The historic home of the BBC in London’s White City, Television Centre (TVC) is now a thriving mix of office accommodation, restaurants, cafés and bars, with around 12,000 people coming through its doors every week.
Grundon provides a raft of award-winning waste services to the complex, working alongside TVC’s own property management team and Principle Cleaning Services.
Its recycling success story has been such that in 2024 TVC won a prestigious International Green Apple Environment Award, celebrating both innovative ideas and impressive waste savings.
When Savills Property Management brought Grundon on board, TVC’s 2022 recycling rate was just 29% – by January this year it had reached a high of 77% and is well on target for an average of 75% by end 2025. The partnership’s success has been such that Grundon’s contract has just been further renewed.
Waste costs have been reduced by around £1,800 a month and new waste services have been introduced, including Tork Paper Towel recycling and kitchen caddies to encourage food waste segregation.
In line with the partnership’s commitment to zero waste to landfill, TVC’s general (non-recyclable) waste is now sent to Grundon’s own Energy from Waste (EfW) facilities.
“Powerful demonstration”
Millie Walton, Assistant ESG Manager, Savills Property Management, says: “Television Centre stands as a powerful demonstration of what’s possible when sustainability is fully integrated into every aspect of site operations, from strategic planning to day-to-day practices.”
Echoing her comments, Lee Duddy, Savills’ TVC Property Manager, says: “We are passionate about waste and recycling and work very hard with all our tenants and teams to promote waste education.
“Grundon has played an important role in our waste success story and the fact we have already exceeded our recycling targets well ahead of schedule shows just how much all our efforts are paying off.”
Lee Duddy
Savills’ TVC Property Manager
“Working together, the team’s ability to get everyone on board through training, education and events, combined with Grundon’s knowledge and expertise, and the provision of both practical and innovative solutions really makes a difference.”
Savills’ remit for Grundon was to implement a sustainable approach to increasing recycling and improving waste management overall.
The goal was to embed ethical waste practices across the estate, ensuring legislative and ESG requirements aligned with the Savills UK Sustainability Strategy, TVC’s ESG framework and Grundon’s own sustainability programme.
Strategy plan
For Grundon, this meant undertaking an initial waste audit and then developing a comprehensive waste management strategy plan. This included collection of all on-site waste streams, including general waste and mixed recycling, alongside materials requiring more specialist treatment.
As a result, a number of new measures were put in place:
In addition, because many of Principle’s cleaning operatives are South American, Grundon’s waste handbook was translated into Spanish and Portuguese and diagrams added to help get waste management messages across. Grundon also provided tailored training to the Principle team to ensure they had all the necessary knowledge and skills in place.
Education
Tenant education was a key plank of the sustainable waste management programme and this means ongoing engagement with occupiers, including educational sessions for ESG managers, visits to Grundon’s waste facilities for occupiers and the Principle teams; together with twice-yearly pubic waste awareness events to increase recycling awareness for tenants, employees and visitors.
Open communication channels and regular feedback between all three organisations ensures engagement throughout the supply chain, with data from regular waste checks fed into monthly performance reports, and a tenant leaderboard to incentivise occupiers to improve their recycling efforts.
A TVC App further empowers occupiers to track their contributions to the site’s overall environmental performance.
Further environmental savings are also achieved as collections are made by Grundon’s fleet of electric waste collection vehicles (EVs).
Partnership
Grundon’s James Luckett, who looks after TVC, says: “We continually work with customers to integrate new recycling solutions and the engagement and support from Savills, together with the TVC and Principle teams, has been outstanding – it is a true partnership approach.
“One of the most important points we always emphasise is correct segregation of waste streams and that is exactly what we have achieved through the introduction of new waste streams such as the Tork paper towels, part of our new RecyclePlus service.
“Simple measures like this can make a huge difference. When segregation is done correctly, it reduces the amount of general waste – which is generally heavier and therefore more expensive to collect – so customers like TVC find their overall waste bills come down and their recycling figures go up.”
All three partners have committed to achieving Net Zero by 2040, with further waste initiatives planned to help meet that goal. These include expanding on-site trials of AI bin technology to further boost recycling and waste bin wrapping with behavioural messaging, as well as exploring other new waste stream opportunities.
Across the overall Television Centre Estate, which also includes the external public areas, recycling more than trebled from 28.8% in January 2024 to 87.2% in January 2025.