Sodexo is celebrating a successful WasteLESS Week.

During the week-long campaign in October Sodexo sites across the UK took active steps to reduce their waste and raise awareness of the importance of doing so on an ongoing basis.

Some of the highlights from the week were as follows:

Emanuel School
Emanuel School in south west London won Sodexo’s internal competition for the best WasteLESS Week initiative. The school focused on reducing food waste by encouraging students to take only what they could eat and to clear their plates. To drive participation the school’s Eco Group presented to each year group in assembly and students who cleared their plates were able to enter competitions to win tuck shop and café vouchers and queue skip passes. Through these initiatives the school was able to reduce their bagged food waste by 43%.

Tidworth and Bulford Garrisons, Project Allenby/Connaught PFI, MOD
The Sodexo team at Tidworth and Bulford Garrisons set out to reduce food waste during the week in liaison with client, Aspire Defence Services Limited, with a target to beat last year’s reduction figure. Chefs in the 24 kitchens at the contract’s sites planned menus very carefully to ensure they prepared only the food required. During the week the team was able to save 60% more waste than last year.

Central Manchester Children’s Hospital
At Central Manchester Children’s Hospital the Sodexo team focused on raising awareness to both staff and their young patients about the importance of reducing waste. Staff were encouraged to use the correct waste streams so that as much waste as possible could be recycled. To get young patients involved, the team created ‘Max 2000’, a robot made from waste materials including a discarded drip stand that was decorated with waste materials during the week.

Phillips 66, Humber Refinery
At Phillips 66, the Sodexo team focused on engaging with employees on small changes they could make to reduce food waste. The team targeted waste reduction of small items such as sauce and butter portions, salt and pepper sachets and bread, asking employees to be mindful of taking only what they would use. The team also ran a waste awareness session and ran internal competitions. As a result of the week the team has decided to remove sauce sachets and introduce dispensers and they have taken an action to look at other measures to improve recycling of cans and plastics.

Paul Bracegirdle, head of environment Sodexo UK&I said; “At Sodexo we have global programmes in place looking at ways in which we can reduce energy, water and materials and waste. Over the last 2 years we have achieved a 28% reduction in waste sent to landfill and a 12% reduction in electricity consumption.

“As a founding signatory of the UK Hospitality and Food Service voluntary agreement, launched by WRAP in 2012, we are working towards the industry target of cutting food and packaging waste by 5% (or approximately 100 million meals) by 2015 and increasing the rate of food and packaging waste recycled, sent to anaerobic digestion or composted to 70%.

“WasteLESS Week is a great way to get people right across the business engaged with waste and environment. The week proves that even simple initiatives and small changes can generate significant reductions in waste. The challenge for us is to build on the momentum of the week and look at the best solutions to quantify and categorise food waste, so we can make more informed decisions on ways we can reduce it. Over the last year, we have worked closely with WRAP to develop and agree on a methodology to capture known food waste data and estimate food wastage where data is not available. This has helped us with our own measurements and will ensure we can measure and report in a consistent way over the coming years.”

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