Mitie Landscapes has become a Corporate Patron of British Conservation Charity, Plantlife, as part of its commitment to help support biodiversity across the UK. Mitie is Plantlife’s first Patron in the facilities management industry.
As one of the UK’s leading landscapes providers, Mitie will be working with Plantlife to support its evidence-based approach to conservation. This will include sharing Plantlife’s conservation and biodiversity best practice with Mitie’s clients, as well as trialling techniques and equipment that will encourage more wildflowers and pollinators to flourish. Mitie’s Landscapes team will also be able to access training and resources to learn about how they can further support biodiversity in their day-to-day roles, kicking-off with training on installing and maintaining meadows.
Mitie’s commitment to become a Corporate Patron follows its previous support for the ‘No Mow May campaign’. As part of the campaign Mitie and its customers, covering some 50 sites across the UK, committed to not mowing their grass for the entire month of May to create more attractive environments for pollinators and encouraging biodiversity. The activity resulted in approximately a 70% increase in flowers providing nectar for pollinating insects across sites. With many of these flowers having been able to seed, the number of flowers should increase again in May 2022.
The partnership is part of Mitie’s Plan Zero commitment to become net zero carbon for its operational emissions by 2025, with one of the organisation’s key commitments being to ‘Improve biodiversity at all of our sites using initiatives that help ecosystems flourish’. Mitie installed 100 bird boxes and 21 bat boxes in 2020, with a commitment to install a further 200 by the end of this year. It also planted 2,000m2 of wildflower meadows – the equivalent to two Olympic sized swimming pools – in 2020.
Tim Howell, Managing Director, Landscapes, Mitie, said:
“With three quarters of the world’s food crops depending on pollinators, supporting biodiversity is no longer ‘a nice to have’ when it comes to sustainability. We must all do more to create environments that support these vital insects, flowers, plants and other wildlife. We’re proud to be working with Plantlife to bring its evidence-based approach to help Mitie and our clients support conservation.”
Ian Dunn, Chief Executive, Plantlife International, said:
“We are absolutely delighted to welcome Mitie as a Corporate Patron, thereby offering our highest level of corporate support. At Plantlife we are committed to working in partnership across all sectors of society to tackle the major challenges we face in addressing the climate and nature crises. With such a large land management portfolio combined with a very progressive approach to looking at how landscape management can offer present day solutions, Mitie are an ideal partner for us to be working with to the benefit of plant conservation right across the UK.”
Notes to editors
About Mitie
Founded in 1987, Mitie’s job is to look after places where Britain works and is the leading facilities management company in the UK. We offer a range of services to Central Government and Defence customers; Communities (Healthcare, Education and Local Authorities); and Technical Services (Engineering Services, Energy, Water and Real Estate Services) and Business Services (Security, Cleaning and Office Services) to Private Sector clients in Financial Services, Manufacturing, Transport, Retail and Telecoms and increasingly to the public sector. Finally, our Specialist Services (Care & Custody, Landscapes and Waste Management) division serves both the public and private sector in higher margin niche businesses.
Mitie acquired Interserve’s FM business in December 2020 and now employs 75,000 people we are the champion of the ‘Front-Line Heroes’ who have kept Britain working during the COVID-19 pandemic. We take care of our customers’ people and buildings, through the ‘Science of Service’, delivering essential services and deploying industry leading technology to create safe and effective workspaces.
The business continues to execute its technology-led strategy and in the past six months has received multiple awards.
Find out more at www.mitie.com.
