DELIVERY SUSTAINABILITY
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manager at Zero Waste Scotland, said event organisers didn’t always have the same level of understanding over how to deal with food waste, as they do with other areas such as transport or energy. She is part of a two-year pilot
project covering Dundee, Fife and Angus. Although not specifically targeting the events industry, she has worked alongside long-estab- lished events, such as the Dundee Flower and Food Festival, which attracts more than 20,000 visitors over three days, and has been run- ning for about 25 years. Successful innovations which
have been introduced include vol- unteers manning recycling points. “It’s impossible to talk about food waste without also having a discus- sion about the other elements,” she said. “It’s not just the food, it’s the packaging that goes with it. “One of the things we find at fes-
tivals and events is that containers can be really badly contaminated with food. Once that’s happened, nothing can be recycled.” Cherry added: “Putting the vol- unteers in is a really effective way to
help the public understand where they can put recycling and why things can’t be recycled. Te more you can do to help the public the better. Te feedback we got from the volunteers was that most people were happy to be educated.”
ABOVE ALL, THE advice from the guide for event organisers is prevention and reduction of waste, before even thinking about measures such as recycling (this approach also applies to the more technical aspects, such as offsetting the carbon impact of energy use). While it can sometimes be dif-
ficult for event caterers to plan for food waste (because of factors such as bad weather affecting atten- dance), in Dundee, a partnership was set up with a charity to give out unused but resalable food and drink to communities in the city. Transform Dundee, redistributed three crates of fresh produce from competition exhibitors, 24 litres of milk, 600 morning rolls and 35 portions of dessert. Overall 95 kg of food waste was collected. Cherry added: “Tis is the CO2 equiva-
lent of driving from Aberdeen to London. Now, this definitely wasn’t all of it and there is lots of room for improvement, but as a starting point it helped.” Zero Waste Scotland has also
been investigating further use of e-learning modules, which can be used by all business, including events teams across Scotland. It is hoped these will form part of a free ‘food- waste toolkit’ for businesses and will sit alongside the Green Champions online module on a variety of envi- ronmental topics, which are already on offer. Te phrase which Cherry has used
Glasgow 2014 was the first Commonwealth Games to receive ISO20121 certification for event sustainability management systems
at workshops she’s held has been ‘thinking outside the bin’: “Wherever possible, we should all be starting with removal from waste streams, such as using a deposit-return scheme. When that isn’t possible, we need to put all the processes in place to increase recycling rates. “At some point in the not-to-
distant future, organisations are going to be forced to do something differently anyway, because we just can’t sustain the levels of waste that are produced.” n
54 | EVENTSBASE | SPRING 2020
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