How much potential food recycling does your business generate annually?
According to the most recent report by the charity Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), 2.9 million tonnes of food waste is produced annually by manufacturers, hospitality, food services, and the retail industry.
Despite this number, figures show that only “56 per cent of food retailers and convenience stores say that they recycle food waste to minimise financial losses and only 24 per cent recycle food waste to avoid costly fines.”
If your business is not recycling food waste, you’re missing a trick. It’s time to discover how something as simple as a food waste caddy can massively impact your bottom line.
Through this article, we’ll explore the detrimental effect food waste is having on the environment, plus the economic benefit that recycling food waste can bring to your business.
Let’s get started.
Importance of Food Recycling
Did you know methane is more potent than carbon dioxide?
When methane, a harmful greenhouse gas, breaks down, it is “80 times more harmful than CO2 for 20 years after it is released.” It’s hard to imagine, but 26 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by food waste being sent to landfills, where it rots, releasing methane, which havocs the environment.
The other issue is food production. Food production requires vast amounts of land, water, and other resources. Wasting food means that all these resources are squandered, leading to unnecessary environmental degradation.
Additionally, the demand for agricultural land to produce food often results in deforestation, which further exacerbates climate change by reducing the planet’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.
By choosing to recycle food waste, your business can:
- Help keep methane out of the atmosphere
- Reduce your carbon footprint
- Mitigate climate change
- Generate renewable energy
- Meet your ESG targets
- Save money
Food retailers in the UK spend over £50,000 a year sending food waste to landfills. However, by investing in a commercial food waste management plan and recycling food waste, retailers could save £ 7,000 annually.
Types of Food Waste to be Recycled
From tea bags to coffee grounds and egg shells, almost all businesses produce some level of food waste. The good news is everything can be recycled.
Some of the items most regularly covered in our food waste collections include:
- Packaged food waste
- Out-of-date food from shops and supermarkets
- Waste ingredients and by-products from bakeries
- Manufacturing, food and drink processing waste
- Industrial food by-products
- Food preparation waste & leftover food from restaurants
- Solid and liquid waste from agriculture
- Pet food waste
- Cooking oil
Whatever food waste your business needs to dispose of, Waste Mission can provide a tailored food waste recycling service to manage your food waste collection. Instead of having a huge negative impact on the planet, your food waste can bring significant benefits.
How Food Waste is Recycled
In-vessel composting, anaerobic digestion, and rendering are the most common ways for businesses to recycle food waste. Each efficiently breaks down organic matter and converts it into useful products.
In-Vessel Composting
In-vessel composting, often regulated by the local authority, involves mixing food waste with garden waste and composting it in a controlled, enclosed environment. Items like tea bags can be included in this process, and a wide variety of kitchen waste, including egg shells, can be composted in an environmentally friendly way.
The in-vessel composting process to break down food waste includes the following steps:
- Mix food waste with garden waste to create a balanced composting material.
- Place the mixture in an enclosed composting system. This allows for better control and efficiency compared to traditional composting methods.
- Maintain high temperatures to speed up decomposition and eliminate harmful pathogens.
Once the composting process is complete within the enclosed system, the compost is allowed to mature outside. This maturation phase helps stabilise the compost and enhance its nutrient content, making it a valuable resource for agricultural use.
The end product is a nutrient-rich compost that can improve soil quality and support sustainable farming practices.
Anaerobic Digestion
Anaerobic digestion uses microorganisms to break down food waste without oxygen, producing biogas (an alternative to fossil fuels) and a nutrient-rich digestate. The biogas generated from anaerobic digestion is a clean energy alternative that helps reduce reliance on fossil fuels and can be used for electricity, heating, or as a transport fuel.
According to the Official Information Portal on Anaerobic Digestion, digesting 1 tonne of food waste can generate about 300 kWh of energy.
In addition to biogas, the anaerobic digestion process produces a nutrient-rich digestate. This by-product can be used as a natural fertiliser, enhancing soil quality and promoting plant growth.
The anaerobic digestion process is efficient and environmentally friendly. It turns waste that would otherwise contribute to greenhouse gas emissions into valuable resources.
To explore how adopting anaerobic digestion technologies could benefit your business, read this article—the benefits of anaerobic digestion.
Rendering
Around 50 per cent of an animal is considered inedible. Rendering is the process that turns this recycled food waste into valuable commodities like fats, oils, and protein meals. Rather than ending up in landfills, leftover meat, fat, and bone can be recycled into new products like nutritious pet food and biofuels.
Rendering allows lower-cost product development by using products that are already available and would otherwise go to waste. Overall, rendering delivers a sustainable solution over the long term, helping protect the environment and reuse materials.
Benefits of Food Recycling for Businesses
Feedback is an environmental campaign group. According to their statistics, a 1% reduction in food waste could save UK food businesses “an estimated total of at least £24.4m a year.”
By adopting a food waste recycling service into your business, you could:
- Reduce waste tonnage and landfill costs
- Reduce operational costs within your business
- Increase environmental awareness across your business
- Create a renewable form of energy
- Invest in environmentally friendly processes
- Boost your environmental credentials
Implementing Food Recycling in Your Business
Implementing a system to manage food waste for recycling can, at first, seem overwhelming. But whether your business needs to start from scratch or improve on what you’re already doing, following a few simple steps will have significant results.
1. Food Waste Audit
Your business is unique, but a food waste audit will define the types and quantities of food waste generated and help identify areas where waste can be reduced and recycled. Book a waste review and start the process.
2. Choose a Food Waste Collection Services
At Waste Mission, our Food Waste Collection Services are structured to seamlessly integrate with your daily operations. Knowing that each business has unique demands, we offer fully customisable food waste collection solutions and specially designed bins.
3. Install your Food Waste Bin
Food waste bins are available in various sizes. From the small food waste caddy to the large food waste bin, having the correct storage for your business will significantly reduce odour and prevent pests from accessing the food waste.
4. Employee Engagement
Weekly food waste collection, new food waste bins, and new processes may initially seem overwhelming to employees. That is why engaging employees in the recycling program is crucial. Providing training and raising awareness about the importance of food waste recycling can encourage employees to participate actively.
5. Monitor and Measure
Regularly monitoring and measuring the success of the food waste recycling program will ensure its effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. It will also help convey to employees why it is so important to recycle food.
At Waste Mission, we provide all contracted customers with an online portal where they can track the waste diverted from landfills and the carbon dioxide emissions from their waste disposal. With easy access to the documents anytime, monitoring and measuring success is simple.
6. Annual Food Waste Audit
An annual food waste audit ensures that your business complies with all food waste regulations, avoiding fines and legal issues and reducing harmful greenhouse gases.
Through innovation and sustainable solutions, a food waste audit will ensure that regardless of how much your business changes, your food waste management will continue to benefit the environment and offer significant advantages to your business.
Summary
It’s time to turn the tide on the vast amounts heading to landfill, creating the obnoxious methane – more potent than carbon dioxide – and instead embrace the benefits of food waste recycling for your business.
At Waste Mission, we can help you find the most efficient method of disposal for your food waste, saving your business money, reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, generating renewable energy, and helping your business meet ESG targets.
We can help you discover a new method of disposing of your food waste, conserve resources, and move towards a circular economy.
