Southend-on-Sea has committed to a greener future by purchasing an electric sweeper.

Cory Environmental provides a wide range of integrated services from street cleaning and municipalwaste collection, to recycling, transfer and disposal. The company'sbusiness stretches from Kent and London to as far north as Merseyside and as far south as Cornwall.

Steve Barthaud, Senior Contract Manager for Cory in Southend-on-Sea is in charge of street cleansing the Southendborough, which covers over 1,400 roads (approximately 700 miles of roads).Steve's team purchased the first 500ze to be used in local authorities in England. He has now been using the Tennant Green Machines 500ze for about three months and has been very impressedwith the electric sweeper.

Cleaning seven days a week from 6 am to 10 pm, Cory needed a reliable and high-performing streetcleaning solution. In the past the team had been using the Green Machines 424 and 636 street sweepersand Scarab machines.

After a demo of the electric 500ze, Steve was amazed by the sweeper's performance. Thefact that it still had a reasonable charge left after a double shift was one of the key benefits. Combinedwith the zero exhaust emissions and the near-silent operation it represented a sustainablechoice for city centre cleaning at any time of the day or night, even in noise-sensitive and busy pedestrianareas.

“It's great to use the 500ze in the high profile areas of the town, such as along the high street, theprecinct and along the seafront. These are all key areas where it's impossible to sweep by hand and where a lot of litter isdropped. It's great for the image of the town centre. The 500ze is versatile and can efficiently adaptto cleaning litter, including on small roads, pathways around the town. Depending on the densityof litter, the sweeper can either revisit an area many times if the litter drop is high or clean periodically.

“The most compelling benefit to purchase the 500ze was the opportunity to be at the forefront of newand developing technologies rather than play catch-up with competitors.”

The 500ze offered Cory a way to demonstrate its commitment to new and environmentallybeneficial technologies with future tenders in mind.Originally, Cory was looking at buying three smaller Green Machines, as part of an order of 424 sweepers, but was able to justifythe additional initial expense of the 500ze, especially for use in the high-profile areas in town, bykeeping the older machines going for longer.

According to Steve, another large advantage related to the 500ze are thecost savings. Cory also sees a clear saving on fuel and reduced repair and maintenance costs, because amongst there are less moving parts and no oil changes, while the low noise and zero exhaust emissions are beneficial to Southend on Sea's inhabitants and visitors.