Award-winning Liverpool One breaks into biofuel

THE Liverpool ONE shopping complex has been awarded the ‘best practice in urban regeneration’ award at the British Urban Regeneration Association awards.

The award identifies the £1bn retail and leisure development as a project that makes a ‘positive contribution to economic regeneration, with many projects acting as catalysts for wider regeneration and in turn creating long-term benefits for local communities’.

This latest win brings the total number of awards won by Liverpool ONE to 45 since opening in May 2008.

Chris Bliss, estates director at Liverpool ONE said: “The acknowledgement from the British Urban Regeneration Association awards is a win we are particularly proud of.
“It shows once again that Liverpool ONE’s core ethos is in the regeneration of the city and building a place within the community.

“We have always understood that we are part of the bigger picture of Liverpool and integral to the regeneration of the city and feel this has been reflected in this achievement.

“As we enter our third year the challenge is now to maintain the high standards that we have set for ourselves and continue to do the region proud.”

The news of the award win comes at the same time as Liverpool One has announced that it has launched a pioneering new £25,000 scheme which will result in it running its vehicles off biofuel converted from cooking oil.

Its fleet of street cleaning vehicles and cherry-pickers off will now run off the ‘green’ fuel which is made from used cooking oil collected from its restaurants.

Liverpool ONE has calculated that the scheme will pay for itself within two years and believes that the initiative will also save 54 tonnes of carbon dioxide in the first year of activity alone.

The ‘biofuels initiative’ is part of Liverpool ONE’s ongoing commitment to lower the carbon footprint of the city.

Chris Grundy, operations director of Liverpool ONE said: “As a vital part of Liverpool’s economy we feel that Liverpool ONE should play a role preserving the environment.

“The biofuels initiative will help lower the carbon footprint of Liverpool ONE and individual retailers – but it is also going to save us money and help those restaurants based here which have an obligation to dispose of the oil responsibly.

“If it proves to be the case that there’s more oil than we can cope with, then we will look at supplying other partners with biofuel too.

“This will be a first for a retail and leisure destination in the UK and we expect this initiative to be picked up as a model for other retail developments going forward.”

The waste cooking oil will be collected from some of Liverpool One’s restaurants and treated in a purpose-built subterranean biofuel room.

The shopping complex has trained four members of its cleaning team to convert the oil into biofuel.