Wasting Away

Reducing the amount of food waste sent to landfill is top of the agenda for the foodservice industry, which must find more sustainable ways of disposing of its rubbish. Kathy Bowry reports.

At a time when operators are being squeezed till their pips squeak by the huge cost of sending waste to landfill (the standard rate of landfill tax went up on April 1 from £40 to £48 per tonne) the foodservice industry must act to find alternative and more sustainable ways of dealing with our rubbish.

The government has pledged to increase the standard rate of landfill tax by £8 per tonne each April up to and including April 2013, meaning that in April 2013 landfill tax will be £72 per tonne.

When you think food waste from the catering industry amounts to around 3.3 million tonnes per annum according to WRAP, that is an awful lot of money being thrown away every year.

European Union directives dictate that councils must reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill by half of 1995 levels by 2013 or face fines of up to £180 million per year.

It actually makes sense not to send the waste to landfill for many reasons not least that it is both a waste of resources and a major contributor to the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions because it lies there producing methane.

However, even if businesses could afford the charges, the Environment Agency says landfill capacity in the UK has fallen from 122 million cubic metres in 1998/99 to 101 million cubic metres in 2007.

In London the drop is even steeper plummeting from 20.7 million cubic metres in 1997 to 9 million cubic metres in 2007. It is therefore paramount that caterers address the problem now and find ways to reduce costs, reduce waste and embrace sustainable waste disposal at the same time.

There are basically three options for disposing of foodwaste: either process the waste on site completely; partly process it and have it collected for recycling; or have it collected unprocessed to be taken away for treatment and recycling. Food waste reprocessing offers an opportunity to reduce waste, save money and improve environmental performance. The government hopes composting, recycling and incineration will together eventually replace landfill.

Some equipment manufacturers offer organic waste disposal systems or kitchens that slash volume and weight, and therefore cost, by extracting the water content and/or macerating the food waste to produce fertiliser or other bio solutions, a task performed by Meiko’s range of Disperator in-sink, benchtop or freestanding organic waste disposal systems. IMC, which has a long pedigree of providing the industry with food waste management solutions can provide simple maceration and disposal to drain to on-site dewatering and composting machines.

Meiko also markets the MicroVac high vacuum food waste system for larger premises which converts problematic food waste into easy to handle, easy to dispose of biowaste, which can also be used for composting, biogas, processing into animal feed and material for sewage treatment. It operates by processing and transporting food waste by high vacuum from the point of disposal to conveniently located, sealed storage tanks. From here the waste is collected via sealed vacuum pipes into specialist waste collection vehicles and hence to be recycled.

Mechline’s rapid food waste decomposition system is the GohBio which uses enzymes to munch up the food waste. These microorganisms are introduced to the machine during set-up and replaced twice yearly, while the wood chip base is changed quarterly. Raw or cooked food is added to the chamber through an access hatch, which starts the process, and as the waste is broken down all that is left is a trickle of grey water plumbed directly into the drainage system.

However, for those who feel the collection route is the way to go, Cawleys specialises in food waste recycling via anaerobic digestion. Food waste is scraped into specially provided biodegradable corn-starch bags which are then collected from the customer in a specially designed lorry which only handles food waste and runs on a part bio-fuel mix. The waste is transported to an anaerobic digestion plant where depackaging equipment separates any plastic, tin, card and paper from the food waste before it is processed.

Kate Cawley, who heads up Food Waste Recycling at Cawleys, says the outlook is a positive one: “Anaerobic digestion 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. However, it will take time for more AD plants to come on stream, but it will happen. At Cawleys through our national arm, Wastesolve we are able to marshal all the solutions available across the country – so there are services available to help caterers stay ahead of legislation,” she says.

Another company offering a ‘takeaway’ service is biodriven which organises bulk collections of used cooking oil to be processed into biofuels and for use in combined heat and power units. “We can arrange collections nationwide, either as a one off or as a continued service agreement through Environment Agency approved contractors. All of our used cooking oils go into biofuels production, contributing to reducing everyone’s carbon emissions,” says David Chalk of biodriven.

One way or another caterers must get their heads around the problem and tackle it now as charges are only going to rise.

Words Kathy Bowry

This article originally appeared in Cost Sector Catering magazine www.costsectorcatering.co.uk

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