South Gloucestershire Council and West Sussex County Council: Greenprint

Greenprint – a net carbon-negative systems model for green infrastructure management.

Theme: 

A green carbon laboratory

Local authorities:

South Gloucestershire Council and West Sussex County Council

Overview:

This project explores transforming local council grass cuttings from waste to value, reducing carbon emissions, costs, and biodiversity loss. Processing the collected cuttings can be used to create clean energy, fuels, and road surface materials. A model will be presented to show how councils can integrate this activity with waste disposal and other services, to deliver financial, environmental, and social benefits.

Project description:

Greenprint is a carbon-negative systems model for green infrastructure management. It aims to reduce operational emissions and revolutionise the narrative for biomass drawn from councils' estates from ‘waste’ to ‘value’.

The partnership will pioneer replicable, circular economy approaches for collecting verge biomass that will reduce the costs and emissions associated with ongoing management, whilst increasing biodiversity. Collected biomass will be processed to generate new sources of clean heat and power, alternative fuels and asphalt additives that will further reduce the cost and emissions from highways operations.

This ‘Greenprint’ will demonstrate a sustainable and replicable model for local authorities, transforming the role and value of the highways green asset, and enable highways, waste and other service functions to work together in synergy to deliver financial, environmental and social value benefits while reducing carbon emissions.

Project value:

£4m.