Leading independent recycling and waste management company, Powerday, has created over £9millon social value for the second consecutive year with every pound that clients spent with the company contributing £0.22 to the local community.
Powerday’s social value is focused around four goals: reducing the environmental impact of the UK’s waste, improving lives through education and employment, improving lives through sport and supporting the wider community where they need it. The company believes strongly in the power of sport to ensure mental and physical wellbeing, providing young people with confidence and self-discipline that will help them throughout their lives. This belief has seen Powerday partner with London Boxing since 2011, an initiative which has improved health and mental well-being for 10,000 young people in some of the most marginalised areas of the Capital.
In January this year, the company launched the Powerday Academy to deliver career opportunities for the local community, including existing employees and school leavers that might be struggling to find work. Under this scheme, Powerday has already provided full time employment to three 16 to 24 year olds who would otherwise be classed at NEETs (not in education, employment or training). The Academy has also enabled Powerday to deliver over 1,130 apprenticeship weeks with 15 employees undertaking apprenticeship courses through the company’s training partners. Joint Managing Director, Liam Kearney says: “With 77% of our staff from within a 15-mile radius of Old Oak Sidings, we are proud to be a significant local employer. We believe that as such we have a responsibility to provide secure and rewarding employment whilst giving opportunities to those in our community who might be struggling to find work. We also want to ensure we have the best trained and motivated team within our sector. To help us deliver against all of this, we were proud to launch the Powerday Academy earlier this year”.
When Covid-19 struck, wanting to continue to support the health and wellbeing of Londoners during lockdown, Powerday helped NHS workers working round the clock by providing nutritious meals. The company teamed up with London Irish Rugby Club, preparing and delivering over 50,000 free meals to frontline workers in 19 different hospitals during eleven weeks.
Edward Crossan, Vice Chairman, Powerday says: “We are committed to using our sustained growth to support our local communities and are very pleased to be able to contribute so significantly, particularly this year given the challenges we have all faced. I believe the coronavirus outbreak has highlighted the need for businesses to contribute to society and it’s vitally important to us at Powerday that we can and do play our part. Our work in this area is now as important to us as our waste management services and we are proud of our contributions”.
The family business has always provided extensive social value through its operations and community work. Last year, Powerday signed up to the Social Value Portal. An initial report for the company’s financial year 2018/19 showed that Powerday created £9.2million of social value in that period. This was followed by £9million in 2019/20, a significant achievement given the challenges in delivering social value projects during the pandemic. This included £1.3million in social value through the 869,000 miles driven in the company’s Euro 6 fleet which emit under 75mg of carbon dioxide per kilometre, and the recycling of 14,500 tonnes of hard-to-recycle wastes including road barriers, mattresses and mixed plastics. Every pound that clients spent with Powerday in 2019/20 contributed £0.22 to the local community.
Powerday’s latest report can be downloaded from Powerday-CSR-2019-2020-Social-Value-Report.pdf
