In the first of a regular series, Foodservice Footprint meets the unsung heroes who are the backbone of companies driving sustainability in their day to day business.
Shirley Kidd is the Housekeeping & Groundcare Manager for Aramark at its client BPs North Sea headquarters where the foodservice provider carries out catering across three restaurants as well as housekeeping and grounds maintenance. The North Sea HQ operates 24 hours per day and is one of BPs largest office sites in Scotland and the base for 1,500 employees.
Shirley has played a key role in developing and embedding greater awareness of the environmental impacts of operational activities amongst both her Aramark colleagues and the employees at BP North Sea HQ. She has been heavily involved in managing the environmental impact of waste at the offices where she has become the face of recycling and sustainability.
Having identified food waste as a primary source of waste to landfill, Shirley investigated various in-vessel systems to deal with the issue. However, these were not found to be cost effective so she recently launched her own food recycling scheme. As well as back-of-house food waste, Shirley has placed waste food caddies at all coffee areas where tea bags, fruit cores and skins and coffee grounds are collected for composting. Shirley has completed the circle by buying back the resulting compost to use on the grounds of the BP offices.
Nick Morton, Sodexo account manager at Honda UK Manufacturing was asked to ensure that Sodexo employees there understood Hondas environmental targets/ strategies and policies.
Nick ramped up the sorting of recyclable products from the catering and cleaning operations to ensure as much recyclable material entered the recyclable waste stream from which the client would receive an income and which reduced landfill tonnage.
He evaluated of a number of composting initiatives on behalf of Honda before exploring the possibility of turning waste cooking oil into biodiesel.
Nick then spent a couple of months researching the process/equipment suppliers and tax and Environment Agency implications before the Fuelmeister 150 was chosen as the best equipment for the job. It can process 150 litres of waste cooking oil into biodiesel over a period of 24 hours through a simple process of chemical reaction called transesterification.
From the waste oil/catalyst reaction there is a by-product called glycerine, or in simple terms basic soap, which Nick has been experimenting with on floor cleaning and degreasing the Honda Engine Plant which is a very dirty part of the Honda manufacturing process. If this is successful Sodexo will have zero waste from the biodiesel process.
Nick has also introduced wormeries at he plant to compost all the food waste from the restaurant. This initiative will allow Sodexo to shut down the food waste macerator, which in turn will save on water, power and maintenance costs as well as producing a compost which can be applied to the flower beds and borders on the site.
For Mark Lovett, apetitos Health, Safety and Sustainability Manager, when he first joined the company, sustainability meant a series of unrelated actions but no coordination or continuity. He then started the company on a journey that would lead to winning the 2010 Catey Award for Sustainability.
First he introduced FareShare to the company. People then understood there was an alternative to sending short-life product to landfill and one which can help others.
Secondly, he got the Executive Management Team to commission a Consultancy to analyse the carbon footprint across the company operation. It gave us a quantified base, real science, on which to measure our progress and identified hot spots where the biggest gains could be achieved. It also gave me the ammunition to convince colleagues to implement actions to improve sustainability. Best of all, as we progressed it became clear we were not only becoming a more sustainable operation, but we were becoming more efficient and cost effective, basically we were a better all-round business.