Fancy getting involved in helping to clear up Paddington and the surrounding areas Canals? Well this is the project for you! Held 2 or 3 times a year and led by Active 360 who run the Paddleboarding operation at Merchant Square – this gets as many people as possible out onto the water picking up rubbish, debris from the surface of the water. To find out more visit: Active360.co.uk

This year’s 11th annual Dragon Boat Regatta & Rubber Duck Race raised over £22,000 for COSMIC’s Home from Home Appeal to build accommodation for the families of the most critically ill children in London and the South East at St. Mary’s.

When St Mary’s opened its first unit specifically designed to look after critically ill children in the North West London area in 1992, it only had one single bed. In the following years it quickly developed and expanded, becoming the Children’s Intensive Care Unit, a centre of excellence with more than five paediatric consultants and over 50 specialist nurses in its staff.

COSMIC (Children of St Mary’s Intensive Care), supports the children’s intensive care unit at St Mary’s Hospital in London by helping patients and their families, and enabling our dedicated team to treat hundreds of critically ill children each year.

To support these children and families during the hardest of times, we help by purchasing vital equipment, providing parent accommodation, supporting training for medical professionals, and funding internationally significant research into life-threatening childhood diseases.

Merchant Square is proud to offer our support to COSMIC in any way that it can, from collecting and wrapping Christmas presents, providing space for events through to working on specific events such our annual Rubber Duck Racing event and of course the famous Dragon Boat Regatta!

The team at Merchant Square are passionate about being as green as possible – even down to the green jackets the onsite team wear!

All of our recyclable waste goes to a materials recovery facility as standard and we have a ‘green team’ who are constantly striving to research and bring in new initiatives that make us even greener!

We have a number of initiatives across the estate, see below for some more detail on one’s we are particularly proud of;

Ultra-sonic units
We have installed Ultra-sonic units in the Canal at Paddington Basin, these units provide an environmentally friendly solution to control algae in lakes and canals.

Recycling initiatives
All of our recyclable waste goes to a materials recovery facility and for items that can’t be recycled these go to a waste to energy site. We also try to bring new initiative’s to Merchant Square where possible.

Earth Hour
Every year we participate in WWF’s Earth Hour turning off as many lights as possible across the Estate and Buildings.

Energy Saving lights
It’s not just Earth Hour where we try to make a difference; we have energy saving lighting installed in a number of locations and more to come! We also have PIR’s (Passive Infrared Sensor’s) installed in a number of locations meaning that the lights are turned off until the sensor detects there is movement in the area.

Merchant Square work closely with The Paddington Partnership’s Community Programme to build relationships with local charities and schools in the local community. In 2018 our colleagues volunteered alongside our landscaping contractors Burleys to transform the grounds at a Westminster Society property for adults with learning difficulties. We also hosted boat trips and afternoon tea for local older people as part of Silver Sunday celebrations in Paddington and ran clothing collections for the Marylebone Project and West London Mission – two local homeless charities.