A leading supermarket chain has emerged as one of the biggest winners at this year’s Association for Organics Recycling (AFOR) Awards after being recognised for its food waste management policies.
Coming as it moves to commit additional stores to its green initiative, Waitrose took away the Retailer of Commercial Food Waste Recycling award for its efforts, which have seen it work to convert leftover food and food waste into energy.
As more commercial retailers look at ways to productively deal with their waste while reducing their carbon footprints, demand among process engineers for bulk material handling machinery such as chain and flight conveyors.
Working alongside Cawleys, the company has already generated around 400 Mwhrs of green power from its waste – sufficient to boil eight million kettles – while plans are in place to ensure that 50 per cent of all waste hits the conveyor belts of its recycling plants by the end of May and 95 per cent by 2013.
AFOR managing director Jeremy Jacobs praised retailers for their on-going effortsongoing efforts.
"This growing and resourceful sector was able to highlight its significant achievements over the last twelve months, acknowledging that all finalists were of a very high standard," he said.
Just recently, environment minister Dan Norris told an event organised by MRW that the UK should work towards achieving a ‘zero waste policy’, with this having the potential to boost demand for bulk material handling and waste management facilities.