Do you know the food waste hierarchy?

According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme’s research and estimates compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately one-third of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted. This has significant economic, social and environmental impacts and equates to over £20 billion worth of food being wasted in the UK annually and over $984 billion worldwide.

In December DEFRA released new statutory guidance on sustainable disposal of food and drink waste with a prioritised list of options.

• Prevent surplus and waste in your business.
• Redistribute surplus food.
• Make animal feed from former food.
• Recycle your food waste - anaerobic digestion.
• Recycle your food waste - composting.
• Recycle your food waste - land spreading.
• Incinerate to generate energy.
• Incinerate without generating energy.
• Send to landfill or sewer.

Enva supports our customers by recording the weights of food waste collections so measurements can be used to see trends and implement targeted interventions. All of the food waste collected in separate bins by our customers will be taken to a local anaerobic digestion plant. Anaerobic digestion is a natural biological process where organic material, in our case food waste, is broken down by bacteria. It is similar to composting but differs in that it takes place in sealed, oxygen-free tanks to produce biogas that can be used to generate electricity and heat, this helps tackle climate change by diverting waste from landfill and incineration.

Some of our customers are going the extra mile and at Nottingham Trent University kitchen staffs are recording their total preparation and spoilage waste on a weekly basis to obtain even more detail. Read the full blog post here.

At both the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University food redistribution schemes have been introduced by student groups to support the homeless, see the full blog post here.