Tackling office food waste with our new recycling caddies

We can no longer ignore that food waste is worse for the planet than plastic and we must prioritise it if we are to tackle the current climate emergency. Through our #ChangeWasteChallenge, the Changeworks Recycling team is constantly thinking of new ways to reduce the environmental impact of our customers – which is why we’ve made it our mission to help the business community in Edinburgh and Glasgow to clean up its act when it comes to food waste. We’re delighted to be rolling out a new trial of food waste caddies this month to help a number of our office-based clients effectively collect and manage food waste. If all goes well, then we’ll be rolling this out more widely. What will the trial involve? We will be issuing food waste caddies to a selection of office-based clients initially. Each business will receive two different sized caddies - a small 5-litre caddy to capture food waste directly from your business’s tea area or kitchen, which will be decanted into a larger 23-litre caddy that will be collected at least once a week. All types of food waste, including banana peels, coffee grinds and tea bags (which I’m sure there will be lots of), can go in the caddies, and to make things easier we’ll provide handy posters and stickers to show what should be going into the special food waste bins. What’s the problem with food waste? Food waste is a huge culprit when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, roughly one third of the food produced globally for human consumption every year ends up getting wasted – that’s approximately 1.3 billion tons of food waste! So, it might seem harmless when you are throwing away the remains of your lunch or tossing the third tea bag of the day into the general waste bin, but the effects of this behaviour can be devastating! Food waste accounts for an incredible 25% of general waste. Plus, food waste is often a very heavy material so contributes a substantial proportion to its weight too – so for any businesses who think they are recycling well but are still seeing a recycling rate below 80%, food waste could be a key tool to hitting that target! Contribute to the #ChangeWasteChallenge All of this effort will help us achieve the aims of our business community #ChangeWasteChallenge, to eradicate 3 million kilos of waste by 2022. It’s a big target, and recycling food waste effectively will help us hugely in achieving our goal! We know that making small changes can have a big impact – that’s why our team will work with you to identify where your business could improve on recycling rates and reduce waste management costs. So please don’t hesitate to ask one of our team how you can get involved.

For more information on Tackling office food waste with our new recycling caddies talk to Changeworks Recycling