CASE STUDIES / transport

Cutting airport waste through tenant engagement

Crowded scene inside an airport terminal with travelers, luggage, digital displays, and signage indicating arrivals and departures.

Challenge

An airport environment needed better waste performance across a complex tenant and services ecosystem.

With multiple tenants, retailers and service providers all operating on site, there was no single approach to waste management, and no shared standard for how different operators handled it.

This made it difficult to drive consistent performance across the whole environment, and hard to know where the biggest opportunities for improvement actually were.

What we did

We combined measurement, service redesign, procurement alignment and engagement to reduce avoidable waste across workplace operations.

Rather than introducing one policy from the top down, we worked directly with tenants and service teams to understand how waste was actually being generated day to day.

This meant redesigning how services were delivered, aligning procurement decisions with waste reduction goals, and engaging staff and tenants so that new ways of working would be adopted, not just instructed.

The results

70% recycling rate

Delivered rapid performance improvement, increasing recycling rates to 70% within 6 months, a significant shift for a site with as many moving parts as an airport.

This wasn't achieved through a single policy change, but through consistent measurement, service redesign and close engagement with the tenants and operators who generate waste day-to-day.

Alongside the immediate results, the work established a scalable framework for ongoing waste reduction and tenant engagement, meaning the improvements aren't a one-off spike but a foundation the client can build on as new tenants and services come on site.

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