Vistry chief executive makes £2,000 charity pledge

Vistry chief executive makes £2,000 charity pledge after taking part in plastic pollution expedition at Devon beauty spot.

The boss of housebuilding firm Vistry Group has given his personal backing to an organisation which is aiming to keep our coast clear of plastic waste with a £2,000 company donation.

Greg Fitzgerald, the chief executive of the Group which includes the Bovis Homes and Linden Homes brands and Vistry Partnerships, made the pledge after seeing the work of Till The Coast is Clear at first hand. The money is being donated by Vistry Partnerships South West and Vistry South West.

Greg and the sustainability team from Vistry took part in a clean-up expedition on the picturesque Kingsbury Estuary in South Devon with the community interest company.

The trip took place during Plastic Free July which is being backed by Vistry and its employees. Plastic Free July is a worldwide initiative which has been set up to help tackle plastic pollution and encourage people to cut waste by using single-use plastics.

Devon based Till The Coast is Clear uses a boat made from recycled materials and kayaks on its expeditions to clear up discarded plastics from hard-to-reach stretches of beach on the south coast.

Greg and Vistry’s head of sustainability Alex Roberts visited three separate beach areas of the estuary to collect plastic litter. And during the trip they collected a large amount of plastic waste.

Afterwards Greg announced Vistry is donating £2,000 to Till the Coast is Clear – £1,000 from Vistry South West and £1,000 from Vistry Partnerships South West business units.

He said: “As a business we are delighted to be supporting the organisation’s ongoing fantastic efforts to clear plastic waste from our beautiful shorelines.

“When I took part in the trip with the Till The Coast is Clear team I was hugely impressed with the work they are doing and I immediately knew I wanted to help them with a donation.

“Here at Vistry we are fully committed to playing our part in protecting the planet and we want to demonstrate that commitment in as many ways as we possibly can.

“We have a roadmap in place towards delivering net zero carbon homes and we are looking at ways to reduce the amount of waste we produce on all of our sites.

“We have set targets to reduce waste on all our sites and all of our colleagues can play their part.”

“There are lots of ways we can work together as individuals and as a business to protect our environment.”

Alex said: “The trip was an eye-opening experience for everyone involved and helped us to refocus and connect with the problem we are all facing when it comes to pollution and plastic waste.

“We were all taken aback by the amount of plastic waste we collected from three remote areas along the estuary in the space of just one day. It was a real reminder of the work that we can all do to protect our beaches.”

Following the trip the team visited Alphington, a Vistry Partnerships South West site, to take a look at the waste management practices which are being put into place with the support and backing of contractor Coastal Recycling.

Vistry is about to launch a project on one of its Cotswolds business unit sites which will measure how much waste is produced during the construction of a standard home. And the housebuilder is also developing a plan to ensure it reaches its waste reduction targets.

The plan will be guided by pilot schemes currently taking place on sites across the UK and with the help of undertaking pilot schemes on sites such as the one at Alphington.

Vistry’s waste reduction targets, which are part of the wider group sustainability strategy, across the group are:

• To reduce construction waste tonnes per plot by five per cent by the end of the year and by 20 per cent by 2025
• To increase the diversion of landfill waste to 98 per cent by the end of the year and 100 per cent by 2025