Hull’s Prospect Shopping Centre is celebrating this week after been awarded its very own gold medal in the year of the Olympics for its environmental best practices.

The centre signed up to the national Green Achiever Scheme in 2010 and was quickly awarded four star status, in October 2011 it was awarded with a silver award for its environmental performance.  Now, just two years into the scheme, the centre has been awarded the highest award, Gold.

“Green Achiever is an award framework that enables us to demonstrate to all stakeholders what we are doing to proactively reduce our impact on the local environment,” said Lee Appleton, shopping centre manager.

Lee adds; “To achieve the Gold Award of the Green Achiever Scheme we had to continue our legal and regulatory compliance, and make improvements to our environmental performance throughout the year, plus continually improve our environmental performance through an agreed action plan”.

Prospect is the first shopping centre in Hull to have been awarded this level of national achievement. Within the centre a number of environmental changes have been made since signing up to Green Achiever. This year the centre became landfill free, proudly Lee says “none of the waste that the entire centre produces goes into landfill, we work very closely with our tenants to ensure that everything is recycled”. Not only is the centre landfill free, the centre has cut water consumption by 114,000 litres and the team is planning to cut it further by 334,000 litres through improving waste management.

Deborah Cairns, Operations Manager at E4environment with specific responsibility for the Green Achiever Scheme, said: “It was a real pleasure to visit the Prospect  Shopping Centre again to see the efforts and achievements they have made over the past year to reduce their environmental impacts. 

The Prospect Centre is not complacent and it has set itself ambitious targets for 2013 to ensure it retains its Gold Award.  Our congratulations go to the whole team at the Prospect Centre on achieving this accreditation and setting a standard for others to follow.” 

For more information visit www.prospectcentre.co.uk or call 01482 324619.

Photograph: Martin Davis, Operations Manager with Lee Appleton, Centre Manager holding the certificate.