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| April 27, 2007 |
| Cannon flies in the face of waste at RAF base |
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Britain's air bases are in the front line of the nation's fast response air defence system. So RAF Lyneham, home for heavyweight Hercules aircraft, forms an unlikely setting for a front line attack on green waste. But Cannon Horticulture have set about transforming one of the country's most important military bases into a centre for clean composting.
RAF Lyneham at Chippenham, Wiltshire, is a major UK air base housing strategic operations, logistics support and administration for the Hercules fleet as well as supporting a tactical medical wing, one of the RAF's largest engineering teams and an aeromedical evacuation squadron. It is also an important strategic base for Cannon Horticulture which, over the past eighteen months has been developing a closed-loop composting solution which promises to become an exemplar in green waste management as well as bringing significant economies.
From the outset, RAF Lyneham promised to be a challenging contract for Cannon Horticulture. For decades before Cannon's involvement at the site, the airbase carried out only basic horticultural maintenance to ensure that the 2,900 acres of real estate was kept up to a minimum operational standard. But this meant that Cannon inherited responsibility for a vast amount of stockpiled, unsustainable waste. This problem, combined with Cannon's commitment to providing long-term sustainable solutions in horticulture, meant that it had to find a system for the ongoing management of green waste on the base to an environmentally acceptable standard.
"At RAF Lyneham we saw immediately that we had two important priorities," says Cannon Horticulture's Area Manager Phillip Mathews, "Firstly we had to create an environmentally-sound system for the management of all future green waste generated at the site. And, alongside this, we had to secure the large stockpile of pre-existing mixed waste so that we eliminated the danger of harmful chemicals leaching into the local soil and water course."
These priorities for Cannon also had to be balanced against the continuous ongoing tasks of land and landscaping management and maintenance that form the core of the Cannon contract at the airbase which, in addition to nearly 3,000 acres - from runways to recreation areas - comprises 1,500 buildings with associated landscaping support needs. The key to developing a successful programme was to use the seasonal workload peaks and troughs to ensure the Cannon Horticulture team could meet a tough commitment to adopting a strong, sustainable solution across the base.
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Copyright © 2006 - Cannon Hygiene, All Rights Reserved |
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