Reduce your waste size
As the issue of waste continues to dominate the responsible hospitality agenda, Emily Manson takes a look at what's being done to tackle the problem and asks how operators can improve their performance
Working out what to do with waste has never been more vital: how to reduce it and where to put it has become a full-time industry. Operators can't fail to have noticed the rise in waste disposal costs - affecting every hospitality business.
Until recently, the issue had mainly been left to operators to use their own initiatives to reduce or recycle their waste. But as new space for landfill sites becomes harder to find and is predicted to be exhausted by 2020, the pressure is stepping up, especially on the hospitality industry.
a tougher approach
The EU's "waste hierarchy" - reduce, reuse, repair, recycle - is finally getting some teeth as it becomes evident that the carrot approach to getting businesses to participate isn't effecting the shift change in wasteful behaviour quickly enough. And so governments and industry bodies are jumping on the bandwagon to force this issue. So what's going on?
Leading the way is Scotland's much talked about Zero Waste programme, launched in June 2010. Its target is to see 70% of all waste recycled, and a maximum of 5% sent to landfill by 2025. It's currently on track to bring in the Waste (Scotland) Regulation in January 2014, which will force food waste to be separated for businesses that produce more than 50kg of food waste a week. For businesses producing 5kg-50kg of food waste the deadline is 2016.
Iain Gulland, director of Zero Waste Scotland, explains: "Businesses will be asked to present key recyclable materials, including paper and card, metals, plastic, and glass separately for recycling while those involved with food retail, production or preparation will also be asked to separate food waste."
Denise Connelly, hospitality, tourism and events manager for Zero Waste Scotland, suggests that businesses should take action to reduce waste and recycle more now in order to prepare for forthcoming regulations.
"Reducing waste and improving efficiency can reduce supply costs and waste management fees. As global shortages drive prices up and new regulations require businesses to contract separate recycling services, these small savings soon add up," she advises.
Meanwhile, the European Pathway to Zero Waste (EPOW) and the British Government have just completed a consultation on waste in the events industry, which will result in a roadmap to help the sector tackle the issue.
Mervyn Jones, EPOW task leader, explains: "The events industry is huge business for the UK, worth an estimated £36b per year to the national economy and employing hundreds of thousands of people. Significant improvements for integrating sustainability initiatives into the planning and delivery of events have been made in recent years and the roadmap vision will help people to improve on this."
Think tank Centre Forum's recent report suggests nothing short of following the Scottish model will be sufficient. Thomas Brooks, Centre Forum's researcher and co-author of the study released earlier this year, has called for the Government to ban all food waste to landfill in England by 2020. He says: "Zero Waste Scotland is a good plan and the Government should follow in its footsteps. We are asking Government to force business's hand into what is actually a win-win scenario, where businesses reduce their waste and help the environment."
He adds that the knock-on effect of forcing businesses to separate food waste is that the increased awareness of the amount of food wastage in turn reduces the actual amount created in the first place.
"We found that if an operation suddenly starts having to separate food from other waste, it notices how much there is and this prompts a noticeable shift in people's behavioural patterns, resulting in less waste creation," he explains.
Similarly, EPOW in partnership with government-funded company WRAP (which helps businesses to reduce waste) is currently investigating practical ways to achieve zero waste to landfill through trials in the South-east of England. The study, due to be completed in March 2013, will be used to extrapolate Europe-wide policies tackling waste.
WRAP's Voluntary Agreement
Meanwhile, WRAP's Hospitality and Food Service Agreement, launched in June, is a voluntary agreement developed with industry and UK, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland governments to support the sector in reducing waste and recycling more and is open to any size of organisation.
Already with around 100 sign-ups, UK-wide signatories include Unilever Food Solutions, McDonald's, Marston's, Accor and Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons as well as Domino's Pizza, Compass Group, the Town House Collection and Gleneagles.
These companies have agreed to two key targets: first, to reduce food and associated packaging waste by 5% by the end of 2015, and second, to increase the overall rate of food and packaging waste being recycled, sent to anaerobic digestion (AD) or composted to at least 70% by the end of 2015.
Lord Taylor, Defra minister for environment, says: "By taking additional steps to reduce the amount of food waste these businesses and organisations will stop the equivalent of 100 million wasted meals going to the bin and save themselves money - a win-win for everyone."
But as the EU's mantra says, it's not all about what's done with the waste; it's vital to reduce the waste your business creates in the first place. Mark Linehan, managing director of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, says that with 600,000 tonnes of food waste created a year, the issue is costing the industry a fortune, despite much of it being avoidable.
"Food waste is a huge problem but rather than focusing all their attention on the best ways to dispose of waste, we should encourage restaurants to work on reducing waste at source," he says. "Waste audits we have conducted in a number of restaurants have demonstrated that easy to implement changes can make a huge difference - not least helping them make substantial savings."
Wasteful Facts
Research estimates that in 2009 UK pubs, restaurants, take-aways and hotels produced around 3.4 million tonnes of waste. Of this, 1.5 million tonnes was sent to landfill, with an associated carbon impact of around 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
If avoidable food waste was prevented and unavoidable food waste diverted to anaerobic digestion (AD), the potential savings to industry would be more than £720m a year.
Source: Zero Waste Scotland
SUSTAINABLE RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION TIPS FOR AVOIDING FOOD WASTE
â- Plan seasonal menus to reduce spoilage (and food miles)
â- Ensure your kitchen orders only what it needs, minimising spoilage
â- Maintain your knife skills and become confident with nose-to-tail cooking
â- Try keeping the skin on dishes such as potato chips and roast pumpkin
â- Use cuttings, peel and excess supply to make pickles, marmalade and stocks
â- Offer to wrap food for customers to take home to minimise plate waste
â- Consider offering different portion sizes, including a children's menu
â- Make a note of food that is consistently returned uneaten
Anaerobic Digestion Update
Anaerobic Digestion (AD) continues to be heralded as one of the key solutions in dealing with food waste. It is currently around half the price of landfill or incineration and some plants will take food waste from hospitality operators for free or a small handling charge. There are currently 170-plus existing sites, but there are concerns that the expansion programme will not keep up with demand.
Centre Forum's Thomas Brooks warns: "There needs to be an 800% increase by 2020 to cope with potential demand. The Government has to ensure the growth of plants keeps up with demand, otherwise the distance to plants can make some initiatives unviable owing to accrued waste miles."
Plans were announced last month for the North-east's first commercial food waste AD facility, after a £850,000 loan was secured from WRAP.
case study the personal approach
Compass Group
Compass's Trim Trax system takes a personal approach to food waste. It enables catering teams to measure how much waste is produced in their kitchens by giving each member of the brigade a food waste bin, and recording everything by volume and category. The recordings are tracked and reported online. This enables the individuals and the wider team to reduce food waste, and to track wastage in the production process through over-production, wrongly ordered or out-of-date stock.
Trim Trax is currently used by food production teams to monitor and reduce food waste and has proved a success, not least because of its simple visibility. Compass plans to use the system to pinpoint trends that can be used to help reduce waste across the company, with a view to eliminating waste to landfill.
case study Focus on the real impacts of the business
Accor
As part of its Planet 21 research and strategy, Accor has found that 64% of its hotels now recycle their waste. However, the report also discovered that the vast majority of that waste comes from building and revamping its hotels (68%), rather than operations.
The group is looking at all the findings from the study to turn them into an action plan regarding impact on the environment, impact on business performance, and employees' ability to take action and lead partners and clients. Accor is investigating waste treatment and recycling channels in each country of operation to shrink the costs and impact of its waste.
"This study has put us in a position to boost our efforts for the environment, and to focus on the main impacts of our business and the main areas for improvement," says Accor's academies and sustainable development director Sophie Flak. "The impacts also have economic and financial consequences, and managing those consequences is pivotal to our group's sustainable development."
Accor is engaging employees, through its academy and 17 international training centres, to get a better understanding of the real impacts on the environment, how those impacts feed through the business, and how it can improve.
The group plans to carry out another assessment in 2015.
Responsible hospitality resource
For more information on how to run your business responsibly, visit our online resource www.catererandhotelkeeper.com/responsible-hospitality. The Responsible Hospitality channel, supported by Accor, Gram UK - and Kraft Foods, features tools and guidance that will help you reduce waste and energy usage, while offering examples and information on increasing recycling, ethical food sourcing and social responsibility.
E-mail your comments to Caterer News here.
Catererandhotelkeeper.com jobs
Looking for a new job? Find your next job here with Catererandhotelkeeper.com jobs
