Ipswich’s Sailmakers shopping centre has gone to war with waste by introducing a new recycling programme.

Tenants in the centre can get discounts on their service charges by selling recycled materials – and new recycling stations are being introduced for businesses and shoppers.

Grundon Waste Management has taken on the contract to remove rubbish from the centre – and until now much has not been recycled.

Sailmakers manager Mike Sorhaindo said making changes was a top priority. “Sustainability is a major part of our business model.

“Achieving the diversion of waste away from landfill, increasing our recycling and improving our collections was a very important objective.

“What we’ve been able to achieve with Grundon’s help has been excellent, we were very pleased with the almost instant results and we are now making a big difference with helping our tenants to understand the importance of waste management and showing them how they can recycle more.

“It makes economic sense because it saves money, while also saving the planet.”

It has seen Sailmakers increase recycling by almost 25 per cent after launching a new dry mixed recycling service both for retailers back-of-house and for the public area.

All the centre’s general waste is now sent to Energy from Waste facilities to be turned into biomass while the old waste bins have been replaced with newly-labelled segregation bins, allowing visitors to recycle paper, cardboard, cans and plastic bottles

The centre’s cleaning team even check the waste bins when they empty them and remove any items which have been put into the wrong bin.

In the future, there are plans to improve the way food waste is managed and Mr Sorhaindo also wants to build a group of waste champions who are passionate about recycling and can help spread the word among their colleagues.

He added: “We rely on our tenants to segregate their waste and generally, it was an easy sell to them.

“They are all using the new bins on a regular basis and, because money raised through the sale of materials sent for recycling or reprocessing goes back to them as savings on their service charges it’s in all their best interests.”