How Ubico keeps communities clean and green with smart and sustainable solutions
Keeping streets clean is no mean feat; from collecting waste to planting flowers, there are many aspects of our communities that we often take for granted. Covering 1300 square miles across Gloucestershire and West Oxfordshire, Ubico provides a wide range of environmental services on behalf of its shareholder councils. The company’s wide range of services include household and commercial waste and recycling collections, grounds and cemetery maintenance, building and toilet cleaning, street cleansing, fleet management and maintenance and household recycling center management.
Ubico is wholly owned by eight local authority shareholders: Cotswold District Council, Cheltenham Borough Council, Forest of Dean District Council, Tewkesbury Borough Council, Gloucester City Council, Gloucestershire County Council, Stroud District Council, and West Oxfordshire District Council. Working collaboratively with these partners, Ubico delivers services that benefit communities and meet specific objectives, whether it’s decarbonization goals or flexible delivery.
PHOTOGRAPHER COPYRIGHT SIMON PIZZEY
UBICO WEST OXFORDSHIRE
Committed to community
Beth Boughton, Managing Director, offers an insider’s view of Ubico’s operations. “We started in 2012 with two councils – Cheltenham Borough Council and Cotswold District Council – but we’ve grown significantly in the last ten years, and we now deliver for West Oxfordshire and the whole of Gloucestershire,” Beth opens. “We commenced waste and recycling, street cleansing, and grounds maintenance services for Gloucester City Council in 2022, which added a new shareholder to our portfolio. The Forest of Dean District Council was already a shareholder, and we added delivery of their waste and recycling services and street cleansing last year, taking the total number of properties, we collect waste and recycling from to over 369,000.
“Employing in the region of 1000 people and operating over 1300 square miles, our purpose is to keep spaces and places clean and green for every resident, visitor, town, village, and community,” she states. “We work in partnership with our shareholder councils and work to their service design; the councils outline their objectives and vision, and we execute these services at cost, offering a cost-effective solution for local authorities. This model enables us to quickly respond and adapt to changes, and by working with several councils, we can effectively leverage opportunities to streamline processes and drive greater efficiency. Each council benefits from coming together on certain initiatives and we can share best practices with our shareholders.”
Sustainable solutions
Alongside expansion over the last ten years, Ubico has also diversified its offering to meet demand for sustainable solutions. “We have a few different approaches when it comes to sustainability, mainly because our partner councils have got their own targets for carbon neutrality,” Beth shares. “We’re an active business in terms of wheels on the ground, so most of our emissions come from our fleet. We’ve implemented several initiatives, and we now have 43 percent of our fleet operating on hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), as well as 31 electric or hybrid vehicles and 43 EV charging points.
“When we started waste and recycling services in the Forest of Dean, the council was keen to use electric HGVs, and this added two electric curbside recycling collection vehicles to our fleet. Working with our partners, we ensure that our fleet specifications include as many features as possible to streamline vehicles in terms of efficiency. We also work directly with our drivers to monitor and improve driver performance, educating them on how their driving style impacts carbon emissions. Also, our in-house fleet management team, which currently operates workshops at our Cheltenham, Cotswold, Stroud, Forest of Dean, and Gloucester City depots, does an excellent job managing and maintaining most of our fleet.
“We’ve also done a lot of work across our supply chain to further reduce emissions by eliminating packaging or condensing deliveries where possible. With SAFPRO, for instance, which provides some of our PPE equipment, we gain corporate social responsibility points based on what we buy, and we can then turn these points into investment in the local economy, the environment, or our workforce. It’s thirsty work keeping our streets clean and we encourage our staff to stay hydrated, but last year, we eliminated single waste plastic by using our points to buy reusable cups and water bottles. We also removed single use plastic from our on-site vending machines”
With waste and recycling one of the highest risk industries, Ubico also prioritizes safety. “Alongside the relevant health and safety accreditations like ISO 45001, safety runs through the core of our culture and our value of ‘Be Safe’ is universally recognized by all our employees,” Beth states. “We are committed to consistently driving continuous improvement in health and safety and compliance. Our internal compliance team ensures we’re meeting legislative requirements to support our safety, health, environment, and quality team with day-to-day delivery.
“Our vehicles are fitted with 360-degree cameras, reversing assistants and radars, and rollaway alerts to help with safety measures. We’ve also introduced in-cab technology across our crews to enable real-time reporting and feed data into both our internal and our council partners’ systems. This helps with delivery efficiency and improves missed collection rates, due to live updates on events like road closures or breakdowns.”
Looking ahead
As our conversation with Beth closes, she turns her attention to what’s next for Ubico. “Our people are the backbone of Ubico and everything that we do,” she states. “We’re passionate about supporting our workforce, and we’ve established new initiatives like an employee engagement survey and improved attraction methods, including an applicant tracking system. In terms of sustainability, we’re continuing to roll out HVO fuel where our partners support it, analyzing our data to develop climate dashboards, and we’re working on some partner-driven environmental biodiversity projects. We’re always keeping a close eye on what’s coming to the market in terms of technology, and we’re extending the in-cab tech into our streets and grounds team.
“We’ve got a strong focus on climate initiatives and reducing our impact on the environment, which aligns with our partners who are also working towards ambitious carbon neutrality targets,” Beth concludes. “We’ll continue to drive greater efficiency by working closely with our shareholder councils, as well as exploring growth opportunities if they align with our current business.”