SUSTAINABLE CATERING
Imperial College has been one of the UK’s leading educational establishments since 1907 and prides itself on its use of cutting edge equipment and solutions.
‘WORLD FIRST’ FOR IMC AND
BACKGROUND IMC’s solution to the diversion of caterers’ food waste from landfill is founded on an extensive 3 year research programme that was concluded in 2006 by senior academics at London’s Imperial College. The solution enables waste producers to recycle their food waste into a high quality compost on site and has already been recognised by awards from both the catering and waste management industries. Following an extensive review by Imperial College in 2007, as a result of which a new Waste and Recycling Strategy was developed, the newly restructured Soft Services team, part of Facilities Management, embarked on an ambitious 3 year recycling development plan to raise
40| SUSTAINABLE FM | NOVEMBER 2010
Imperial College’s approach to dealing with waste to a level that would represent the benchmark for the sector.
THE CHALLENGE
With around 90 different buildings across the Campuses, including research facilities at four London Teaching Hospitals, the task of introducing cost efficient, practical disposal solutions is rendered especially difficult, a fact confirmed by Waste & Recycling Manager, Nic Dent. Formerly a Manager in the NHS, Nic has introduced a series of initiatives during his two and a half year tenure at Imperial with the aim of increasing the College’s recycling rate from around 19% in 2007/08 to 40% by the end of the 2010/11 academic year.
“We generate around 50 different types of waste and our primary objective has been to streamline the collection and disposal of these across all our Campuses. In addressing the multiple waste streams, food has been recognised to be one of, if not the, most difficult to deal with and is the single largest waste stream at our main Campus in South Kensington which had not yet been tackled.” As Nic explains: “During our cross-departmental discussions to identify the solutions available, from which we intended to draw up our short-list, we discovered that our Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering had worked with IMC to develop a solution that appeared to meet all our criteria.”
Despite the obvious provenance of
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