Hampshire Highways Carbon Workshop

As part of M Group Services commitment to the environment and sustainability, Milestone Infrastructure recently attended Hampshire Highways’ carbon workshop in Winchester.

This was the second workshop to take place and was held at the Sparsholt Conferences and Events centre. Over 50 people from Milestone, Hampshire County Council and supply chain partners took part.

Amy Redpath, Graduate Environmental Advisor at Milestone hosted the event with presentations from Nicole Turley, Sustainability Manager, Simon Watson, Business Director and guest speaker Adam Gittins, General Manager at Cemfree.

The event was centred around Hampshire Highways’ plans to reduce their carbon emissions by 60% before the end of 2029. Talks focused on:

• The Micheldever Road Materials Recycling Facility, a Green Apple award winning centre that opened in June 2021. The facility has helped save 485t of CO2e by recycling over 25,500t of construction waste.
• Hampshire Highways’ vehicles switching to HVO fuel from April last year. The fleet have managed to save 1,103t of CO2
• The contract swapping to the use of Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) except where Hot Rolled Asphalt is specified. This means mixing materials at lower temperatures which in 2021 saved 114t of CO2
• Hampshire Highways trialling plant machinery and equipment that operates on battery power rather than petrol.

Attendees took part in group discussions, coming up with ideas to further reduce carbon emissions on the contract. These aligned with the four pillars of the Hampshire Highways Carbon Strategy: materials, fuel, design and depots. Our people suggested some brilliant ideas which the Hampshire Highways team are looking to incorporate in their updated Carbon Strategy.

Simon Watson said: “We have been developing our Carbon Strategy to drive change in how we deliver essential highways services while significantly reducing carbon. The carbon workshop brings our strategy to reality by helping us determine what we will do next to continue reducing carbon in Hampshire.”

The contract’s commitment towards carbon reduction is being recognised with the Micheldever Road Materials Recycling Facility being nominated for the Low Carbon Project of the Year award at this year’s Construction News Awards. The awards are due to take place on 14 July at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London. We wish the Hampshire Highways team the best of luck.

The workshop reinforced M Group Services’ commitment to halve carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero before 2050. M Group Services has received an ESG rating of 9.6 based on an in-depth independent analysis by ESG risk ratings agency, Sustainalytics.

This is the best performance in the business support services sector compared to a sector average of 21.9. It means the Group has a ‘negligible risk’ of reputational and operational risks through its direct and indirect suppliers. The rating puts us among the top one per cent of global companies for our commitment to the environment and sustainability.