LEWES TAKES LEVEL HEADED APPROACH TO GREEN ISSUES
When you think of a green solution to your vehicle needs, it can be tempting to think what’s ‘green’ on paper will be green in practice. However, careful analysis by Lewes District Council has seen a clever redeployment of vehicles to suit their own circumstances.
As one of the UK’s most forward looking authorities when it comes to environmentally friendly waste vehicles, Kevin Mansell at Lewes council was delighted with the addition of electric vehicles to his fleet. However after being in use, analysis demonstrated they weren’t suited to every situation as Kevin explains.
“The electric vehicles are doing a great job, however, because of the number of miles some of the rural vehicles need to cover they can end up of a long way from base where they need to be charged and have to come back more frequently. These particular vehicles go at relatively low speed too so there is a lot of travelling time and less collection time. We’re always looking for better ways of working – the greenest and most efficient, so we decided to review the deployment two of our rural electric vehicles.”
Having approached LinkTip the two parties worked together to design a new vehicle body. Kevin added: “What I really liked about LinkTip was the fact that they didn’t say no to any ideas they asked how can we make it work?”
The result is a 7.5t recycling vehicle with two tail lifts which will help collect cans, paper, textiles, scrap metal and glass from household in the far reaches of their catchment area. The advantage of this vehicle body is the design which carries more bins and greater productivity.
Kevin added: “Sorting at source means we have ‘cleaner’ material and get a better price for it from the end user.
As for the two electric vehicles the new LinkTip has replaced well they have not been lost – merely deployed to other duties in the more densely populated urban areas as Lewes continued to use its resources in the most efficient way as possible.
