DPD has announced the rollout of an air quality monitoring programme across six of the biggest cities in the UK.
The initiative, dubbed Project Breathe, is already live in London with 100 mobile air quality sensors on the roof of DPD vans and 20 fixed units on DPD PickUp shops close to schools and play areas.
The end of this month will see the project rolled out to Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff to create a network of more than 400 sensors in total, delivering 1.5m pollution readings a day.
The sensors are the size of a broadband router and take readings every 12 seconds. The UK roll-out is part of a Europe-wide DPD programme in partnership with air quality tracking provider Pollutrack, with a planned total of 2,400 sensors across 20 European cities by the end of 2021.
Once the sensors are installed and monitored for two months, DPD will provide air quality information based on real measurements, street by street via the Pollutrack AirDiag system, for local councils to help in their policy making. The data will also be available to DPD customers and academics.
Olly Craughan, DPD’s head of CSR said: “Typically, air quality monitoring has just been based on fixed positions, whereas we are mobile and cover the whole of a city at different times. We will be providing real-time, breathing level readings that could help improve air quality for millions of people.”
