‘Our work has a genuine and tangible impact on our communities’

Recently launched in Bristol and operating out of premises in St Philip’s Marsh, Grundon takes great pride in its heritage and its distinctive, innovative approach.

Founded in 1929, the family company is one of the UK’s leading providers of waste management and environmental services.

Among its historic achievements are the introduction of the wheelie bin for trade and domestic waste collection in 1982, construction of the UK’s first environmentally acceptable clinical waste incinerator in 1990, and becoming the first major waste industry company to go carbon neutral across its fleet.

The city’s outfit is led by Daniel Peacey, regional sales manager, who joined the company in 2006 as a 19-year-old.

Grundon Waste was the first major waste industry company to go carbon neutral across its fleet – photo: Grundon Waste Management

His main responsibilities include managing looking after key account customers and seeking new business for Grundon.

Daniel spoke to Bristol24/7 about what “better business” means to him:

What’s the one thing that inspires you to get up in the morning?

We’re lucky that our work has a genuine and tangible impact on our communities – it’s satisfying to help keep the city clean. We also know we’re playing our part in helping improve the global environment through our recycling programmes. So we’re at the coal face of the recycling movement, which is a great place to be, and we’re on a daily mission to encourage more customers to get make the most of these opportunities – to generate income from recycling, as well as benefitting the environment.

If you could pick one thing to change about Bristol what would it be?

That’s a tricky one – Bristol’s such a great city with an amazing ethos. In an ideal world, everyone would aspire to the zero waste economy but, in reality, many businesses find waste management time-consuming and complex. So for us, it’s a matter of communicating and more thoroughly embedding the benefits of recycling, supported by practical advice on compliance, measurement and waste segregation.

What does a Better Bristol mean to you?

As a business, we’re looking to promote a culture of recycling and reuse wherever we can. Bristol’s great at that already – it’s woven into the fabric of the city – but there’s always more that can be done. Bristol’s got a unique culture of sustainability mixed with technology and innovation, so we need to continue to harness both of those features to help waste and recycling play its part in creating a genuine circular economy.

What action could you as an individual take? What action could your company take?

People often think that there’s little impact they can have on these massive issues like sustainability and climate change. I don’t agree with that. Government has a role to play, of course, but it’s only through individual action that change actually happens. So we can all affect our various circles of influence, whether that’s friends and family, work contacts or social groups. Of course as a company it’s in Grundon’s interests to communicate to the local business community how they can get on board.

What do you want to see from the Bristol business community in the next five years?

We’d love to see more businesses thinking about how they can recycle more effectively, putting strategies in place to centralise, segregate, sort and process their waste. I’d like to emphasise the financial benefits of recycling. There’s money to be made from effectively managing waste and we’d love to talk to more businesses on how they can benefit commercially from the services we offer.

Main photo: Grundon Waste Management

Read next:

• Grundon joins the Better Business Network
• ‘It can be simple conversations that ignite inspiration’
• ‘There are so many actions that you can take as an individual’

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