Highly-visible Recycling
In the UK alone, 400,000 - 700,000 tonnes of textiles are sent to landfill sites instead of being recycled every year*. This is a major environmental problem.
When Network Rail brought its maintenance in-house, most of the workers needed new safety clothing. This is because track workers’ clothes must have the Network Rail logo so that the workers can be identified easily.
The redundant kit was still usable so instead of binning it, we donated it to heritage railways, scout huts, schools & community groups.
Over 1600 high-visibility vests, jackets, body warmers & coats were donated to more than one hundred organisations.
Not only does this help protect the environment, it also provided valuable personal protective equipment to many people.
The Avon Valley Railway, a heritage railway that runs steam & diesel trains between Bristol & Bath, benefited from this scheme.
“We will be using the donated jackets & vests immediately as the safety of our railway is very important to us” said Dave Cole, Development Co-ordinator of the Avon Valley Railway.
Although this project is finished, Network Rail is continuing to recycle its old safety clothing. When kit is too old to be used anymore, we send it to a shredder where it is used to make fibre board for the construction industry.
*Source: WasteOnline, the website managed by Waste Watch, a leading environmental charity dedicated to the reduction, reuse and recycling of waste.
Waste
We reduce, reuse and recycle our waste whenever we can.
Our waste includes lineside scrap, waste from the stations that we run, domestic waste and track materials. Track materials include rail, sleepers and ballast (the crushed rock laid to form a bed for the railway).
Our approach
We aim to minimise the impact of our waste on the environment through:
- Reducing the amount of waste produced
- Reusing & recycling items whenever possible
- Working with local authority officers on recycling
- Planning the disposal of waste before work commences
- Storing waste in the correct containers & labelling it correctly
- Specifying that contractors report their waste statistics and reuse & recycle when they can.
Reusing & recycling ballast
There is a centralised department called the National Delivery Service which manages all of the track materials. This helps us to reuse most of our ballast and a significant proportion of rail & sleepers.
In 2005, we reused or recycled 91% of ballast used on the network. Where the ballast is not suitable for reuse on the railway, we sell it and most of that is then reused or recycled by others.
The table details the total of waste rail, sleepers and ballast removed during 2004/05.
| Waste material | Unit | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Rail* | Tonnes | 71,854 |
| Sleepers (wooden and concrete)** | Numbers | 718,133 |
| Total ballast removed from infrastructure | Tonnes | 1,292,253 |
| Ballast (not recycled/reused) | Tonnes | 107,323 |
*Relates to the tonnes of rail removed from the infrastructure which is all re-rolled into further steel materials
**Relates to the numbers of sleepers removed from the infrastructure.
A significant proportion of these shall be reused or recycled
Litter & flytipping
Unfortunately, the railway is a prime target for litter & flytipping (illegally dumped rubbish) by members of the public and it causes us health & safety problems problems. They are unsightly, unhygienic and sometimes unsafe. For example, litter attracts rats to the railway. Rats like to chew on signal cables as well as rubbish and this can lead to signal failures, delays & even accidents.
Network Rail is committed to cleaning up litter & flytipping and preventing new incidents. For more information on how we do this, please have a look at the litter & flytipping page.