How Green is Your Canteen?

Published - Friday, 13 November, 2009

London Metropolitan Business School and the Institute of Hospitality hosted an event (12 November) showcasing initiatives which are helping universities and the hospitality sector as a whole to tackle the UK’s food waste mountain.

Addressing the audience made up of London IoH members, university sustainability managers and hospitality and catering students from London Metropolitan University, Fiona Serrecchia of waste management and recycling company Cawleys, outlined the UK’s horrifying statistics: a staggering twenty million tonnes of food waste is thrown away each year. Just over one third of this food waste is generated by householder; the remainder represents waste from retailers, food manufacturers and the hospitality sector (WRAP data 2009). More than three quarters of food waste goes straight to landfill sites where it decomposes and emits harmful greenhouse gases.  Serrecchia outlined the more environmentally-friendly alternatives to landfill which are now available to organisations, including biogas/anaerobic digestion, in-vessel composting, rendering plants and animal feed merchants and waste to energy plants.

In particular, Serrecchia presented Cawleys’ innovative Food Recycling Round which processes a wide range of foodstuffs including those which can be difficult to dispose of such as raw meat, liquids and heavily packaged and out-of-date stock. Cawleys’ pioneering commercial food recycling service processes food waste via Anaerobic Digestion (AD).  Cawleys collects and transports food waste to an AD plant owned by BiogenGreenfinch with whom it has a unique partnership. Addressing the audience, Serrecchia stated:

“Anaerobic Digestion, a process hailed as the future for food waste recycling in the UK, provides a fabulous solution to food waste – instead of sending food waste to landfill where it produces methane, a climate-change gas twenty-two times more powerful than carbon dioxide, it is turned into fertiliser returned back to the land, and methane converted to electricity. As a sustainable solution it is unbeatable”.

Michelle Dixon, Director of Revise, a resource management consultancy for the higher education sector, and formerly Sustainability Manager at the University of Hertfordshire, presented a case study outlining how the University of Hertfordshire has tackled the issue of food waste management across its portfolio of sites. The University of Hertfordshire educates 24,000 students and employs 2,500 members of staff across three campuses and its other satellite sites.  In providing high-quality educational, research and work facilities the University recognises the importance of embedding continuous environmental improvement into its business model and ethos. Implementing a food waste recycling strategy has been a cornerstone of the University’s environmental policy.