Tackling Food Waste: A Look on Composting

by Jekaterina Drozdovica

Most of the food waste in restaurants and cafes is avoidable. Slingshot investigates how composting can help to recycle the leftovers.

Garden Cafe is one of a few restaurants in London to recycle food waste into compost for their garden

An estimated three million tons of food is thrown away every year in the UK hospitality businesses, with 65 per cent of waste occurring during cooking according to the research by the charity WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme). Yet at the Garden Café, all the kitchen scraps go to enrich the greens around the building. “Our gardener never buys a fertiliser,” says Nick Gilkinson, the restaurant manager. The food waste is usually placed in a three-stage composting bin, but not everything can be recycled using this technology. Not meat, for example.

Composting is an efficient way to reuse waste as hospitality industry produces an estimated 3M tons of food waste

“There’s not that many restaurants with gardens,” Gilkinson says. Alternatively, the businesses can hire a food waste collection company, which would then transport the waste to the anaerobic digester. The mechanism breaks down the waste into a mixture of gasses that produce renewable energy. It also creates natural fertiliser for farming.

Reusing waste could be the key but If a restaurant doesn't have a garden they can order a collection

Yet businesses are often reluctant to use the service to additional costs. As explained by Dr. Viachaslau Filimonau, a principal academic of hospitality management at Bournemouth University: “Enterprises are not considering the anaerobic digestion as a feasible alternative because they have other operational areas to look after and it’s simply not a priority for them.”

But even if the anaerobic digestion was obligatory, it wouldn’t be the best solution for the environment. One of the gases produced by the mechanism is methane, which is 21 times worse for the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.

Sonya Meagor is the founder of Eco Cuisine, a sustainable catering company based in London. She feels positive about turning the food waste into garden fertiliser and plans to organise it for her business after talking to Slingshot. “The biggest challenge is logistics. We could give away the compost to local vegetable gardens. It’s a great idea.”

To read Jekaterina's extended investigation into the food waste problem, pick up a copy of Issue 1.

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