© Gwen Powell 2010

Food Waste

© Gwen Powell 2010

Biodegradable waste

Think your business is not creating biodegradable waste?

Think again!

Averages:

± 500g of food waste per person per week in an office without a canteen

± 1.5kg of food waste per cover where an office has on-site catering services

± 2.5kg of food waste per cover in the restaurant or hotel industry

Food Waste going to Landfill:

creates methane which is 25% more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide

© Gwen Powell 2010

Government Regulations

The EU Landfill Directive, and announcement in the 2010 Chancellor’s Budget that Landfill Taxwill increase drastically in the next couple of years -> reaching as much as £80 per ton in2014/2015, has important implications for waste handling and waste disposal in the UK.

To comply with the Government Landfill

Directive, all UK businesses are required to

pre-treat their general non-hazardous waste

before it goes to landfill. One of the ways to

comply with this is to segregate waste at

source, i.e. to separate recyclables -

cardboard, paper, steel and aluminium

cans, plastic and glass bottles.

Further segregating compostable waste

could reduce the total volume of waste by up

to 35% and our on-site food waste solutions™

systems not only reduces the pay per tonne

volumes going to landfill but also eliminates

the need for that waste to be transported

elsewhere to be treated.

© Gwen Powell 2010

Introducing kompost™

kompost ™ identified practical on-site food waste solutions™

for office based organisations and businesses,

to include on-site contract catering services,

corporate headquarters, schools, colleges

and hotels with their own grounds.

Saving businesses money by segregating tea bags and other food waste :

→ reducing their general waste by up to 35%

→ increasing their recycling rates by as much as 40%

→ and at the same time leaving both those streams uncontaminated

→ so that fewer waste collections are necessary.

© Gwen Powell 2010

Pig Man to kompost™

Historically catering food waste was being fed to pigs but in 2001, with suspicions that pigsbeing fed infected waste that had not been properly heat-sterilized, being the cause for theoutbreak of foot-and-mouth in the UK, this practice was banned.

Food waste is the one component of waste that we canrecycle ourselves, at source, with no need for it to betransported elsewhere to be dealt with, and becomes avaluable resource in the form of a nutrient rich compostwhich in turn takes the pressure away from our preciouspeat bogs.

With an imminent ban on biodegradable waste beingsent to landfill this will become an obligation rather than achoice.

kompost™ sets up and services on-site food waste solutions™

© Gwen Powell 2010

Small Scale On-Site Solutions

Vermicomposting (worm composting)

For office based organisations and businesses whereno canteen or restaurant is present and the food wastevolumes are less that 100 litres (67kg) per week, mainlyconsisting of tea bags, coffee grounds and fruit &vegetable peelings, the recommended set-up would becompost bins heavily accelerated with Eisenia foetida(red wrigglers) and Eisenia hortensis (Dendras orEuropean nightcrawlers) - in other words creatinglarge scale wormeries in standard compost bins.

Animal By-Products (meat / fish / dairy) can NOT bepresent in this system and very little outside space isrequired for this set-up. No smells or rodents to worryabout and the worm compost is extremely soughtafter by groundsmen and gardeners alike.

© Gwen Powell 2010

Medium / Large Scale

On-Site Solutions

In-Vessel Composting (micro-organism composting)

For on-site catering facilities, schools, colleges, universities, restaurants and hotels with their owngrounds where the food waste volumes are larger than 100 litres (67kg) per week and whereAnimal By-Products (meat / fish / dairy) might form part of the equation, the recommended set-upwould be an in-vessel food waste composter. In-vessel composting make use of the naturally occurringmicro-organisms present in food waste, by providing the perfect habitat for them, to speed up thecomposting process. No smells or rodents to worry about and the end product is extremely soughtafter by groundsmen and gardeners alike.

© Gwen Powell 2010

We use two different in-vessel food waste composters: the Ridan™ Composter for volumes up to400 litres (267kg) per week, and the Rocket® Composter for volumes up to 3,500 litres (2,3 tonnes) aweek. If the in-vessel composters are used in conjunction with macerators and dewaterers, then foodwaste volumes of up to 10,500 litres (7 tonnes) can be treated on-site.

Medium / Large Scale

On-Site Solutions

© Gwen Powell 2010

1. Increase profits

2. Enhance brand image

3. Reduce energy & water bills

4. Gain a competitive advantage

5. Meet blue chip tender requirements

6. Reassure customers, staff and investors

7. Improve corporate social responsibility

8. Demonstrate contemporary & progressive management

9. Obtain and/or comply with ongoing ISO14001 accreditations

10. It is more affordable than you think!

Benefits & Case Study

CASE STUDY:

Please ask to see a copy of the case study prepared for the Bank of America (Chester Call Centre) where installation of an on-site food waste solution is saving the company ± £30,000 per annum.

© Gwen Powell 2010

Joe Hawkins, Head Gardener at The

National Trust’s Shughborough Estate

in Staffordshire, discovered that by

treating plant material infected by the

problematic Phytophthora pathogen,

which is the cause of diseases like Sudden

Oak Death amongst other, with The

Rocket® in-vessel composter not only

sanitises the diseased plant material but

the resultant chemical free compost also

benefits Shughborough’s classical

eighteenth century landscaped gardens by

improving the soil structure – Joe is

“Healing the Landscape” with the

assistance ofThe Rocket®.

“Healing the Landscape” (slightly off topic but nevertheless pioneering)

© Gwen Powell 2010

Our Clients

Blue chip corporate companies that have already adopted this “third waste stream” for their head offices are SEGRO plc on the Slough Trading Estate, Softcat Ltd on the Thames Trading Estate near Marlow and Rank plc & Mattel Inc. both in Maidenhead.

kompost ™ also proudly counts Seacourt Ltd near Oxford, the Henley Business School near Henley-on-Thames and the New Economics Foundation in London as serviced sites.

Softcat Ltd managed, with the assistance of a couple of worm colonies, to turn their 1,200 tea-bags-a-week habit into the most beautiful compost.

Seacourt Ltd found that to comply with the required continued improvement of the EMAS and ISO14001 Certification they had to call on the trustworthy earthworm, to help them to achieve “zero waste to landfill” – believed to be a first for the printing industry.

© Gwen Powell 2010

Our Clients

SEGRO plc on the Slough Trading Estate

kompost™, founded by Gwen Powell, is working in partnership with SEGRO to introduce a new concept in food waste recycling to UK businesses, starting with SEGRO’s own HQ on the Slough Trading Estate.

kompost™ installs and manages on-site food waste composting™ facilities, turning used tea-bags and coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable peelings, unwanted sandwiches and even canteen waste into high quality compost.

Following an audit at SEGRO’s head office, kompost™ has installed a food waste composter on-site, which is recycling up to 150 litres of food waste per week.

Claudine Blamey, Head of Sustainability

New Economics Foundation in London

Since being introduced to kompost™, and the concept of a third waste stream, we have managed to keep 4 times more organic waste from our general waste stream, with all the resultant benefits.

We consider composting as an integral part of reaching our 10:10 targets.

Elna Kotze, Operations Director

© Gwen Powell 2010

Contact Details

Please do not hesitate to contact Gwen Powell:

www.kompost.co.uk 07941 524 222

kompostgwen

http://kompostgirl.blogspot.com

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/gwenpowell74

kompost – on-site food waste composting

gwen@kompost.co.uk

kompostgwen

http://www.youtube.com/user/kompostgwen