“Waitrose shop teams work hard to minimise the amount of unavoidable food waste generated.
” foodwaste The anaerobic digestion solution byMIKE WALTERS, MANAGER WASTE & WATER RESOURCE FOR THE JOHN LEWIS PARTNERSHIP.
Last year Waitrose gave a well received presentation to the Guernsey Chamber of Commerce outlining examples of waste initiatives that are driving sustainable business development and hope to do the same in Jersey to highlight retailer progress in turning waste into resource, as
T
he John Lewis Partnership started a food waste recycling
trial in 2008 in five Waitrose shops in Northampton.
I kept a close eye on the project to see if Partners (that’s what we call John Lewis Partnership employees) could successfully segregate food waste. Our existing recycling bins could get into a bit of a mess and we needed to prove that we could handle food recycling as a separate waste stream.
Cawleys Ltd was already established, collecting waste in specialist food collection vans from fairly small food outlets in Northampton, and along the M1 corridor into London. Cawleys wanted to make their operation more efficient by infilling with more collection points, so
approached several businesses offering their service. Most businesses weren’t interested unless Cawleys could arrange a nationwide operation, something that was simply not available at that time as there was only one AD plant capable of processing commercial food waste.
At Waitrose we said why not, we’ll give it a try.
Cawleys took the waste to an anaerobic digestion plant in Bedford, run by Biogen.
Above all other food waste solutions, such as composting, anaerobic digestion worked well for us. The Partnership has been using green energy for the past few years, and as anaerobic digestion generates green electricity which is fed back into the grid, it appealed to us because not only would we be using green energy but also putting something back.
The five-branch trial was wholly successful and Partners proved themselves thoroughly capable. Cawleys make collections two or
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20/20 Habitat - The Environment
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