South Western Railway have begun trialling a Pluvo air-purifying totem at one of many busiest stations within the South West.

The Pluvo Column, located on platform 4 at Salisbury station, will monitor and take away pollution from the air utilizing air filtration know-how to create a cleaner and more healthy surroundings for patrons.

The Column will be put in in any house with entry to mains energy. It ‘breathes’ in surrounding air and purifies it by way of a 3 stage scrubbing course of that eliminates airborne PM, focused gases equivalent to NOx and viruses with as much as 99.5% effectivity.

The Column not solely produces over 2,000 breaths of fresh air per second, it additionally displays and tracks the native air high quality. 

South Western Railway prospects can get extra details about the Pluvo Column and provides SWR their ideas on the initiative by way of an interactive two-way engagement platform from Hello Lamp Post. This allows passengers to interact with SWR’s ‘friendly bird mascot’, Wesley C Peck.

If the trial is profitable, SWR say they might set up Pluvo Columns at extra of its stations as a part of its drive to enhance the journey expertise for all its prospects.

The partnership with Pluvo is simply one of many methods wherein SWR is making an attempt to enhance their prospects’ journey expertise.  They have put in greater than 4,000 cycle areas throughout its huge community within the final 5 years and are encouraging sustainable tourism by enabling prospects to journey by rail to a vacation spot after which proceed their journeys by way of bike and scooter rent.

It can also be a part of SWR’s drive to be a extra sustainable practice operator. SWR was the primary TOC to publish a roadmap to Net Zero and to have its carbon emission discount targets recognised by the Science Based Targets initiative, a number one international local weather physique.

Jessica Van Staden, South Western Railway’s Senior Sustainability Manager mentioned: ‘This partnership with Pluvo is very important to us as we investigate and trial new ways of improving our customers’ journeys. The outcomes of the Pluvo Column trial at Salisbury might have far reaching results on how we enhance air high quality in our stations in addition to in different public areas.

‘We would like to encourage customers at the station to use the Column’s chat characteristic to provide us their opinion on the trial and whether or not they want to see it prolonged to different SWR stations.’

Matteo Maccario, CEO of Pluvo, added: ‘We’re delighted to be working with SWR to enhance the air high quality at one of many South West’s busiest stations. Air Pollution is the only largest environmental menace to international well being and the Pluvo Column is an answer which may also help create more healthy and safer areas for us all.’