What happens to our waste?
REDUCE BY MINIMISING WASTAGE
We begin by keeping wastage to a minimum. Our teams revise their ordering & production daily to make sure that as little as possible is left over at the end of each day. And our chefs cherry pick the ripest fruit and vegetables for use in store each day.
REUSE BY FOOD DONATING
We donate goods approaching the end of their shelf life to organisations that supply meals for those in need, such as: The Upper Room, a hard-working West London charity that runs a free restaurant for the homeless. The Upper Room was awarded an Andy Ludlow Award for their work distributing food around London using homeless & ex-offender workers (see photo).
We also work with Streetlytes, a local homeless support charity who collect from the store every Saturday & Sunday. During term-time we also work closely with Foodcycle, a food bank charity programme run by volunteers at the local Imperial College.
COMPOSTING:
The majority of food waste in the UK becomes landfill, where it decomposes, releasing methane, which is 21 times more globally warming than carbon dioxide.
We COMPOST our organic waste at the most local composting facility to the store – we partner with a business called Bio-Collectors who collect our fruit & vegetable peel/trimmings & items unfit for sale or charity collection. They take this waste to Vertal in South London. Through this partnership we have been able to minimise our landfill volumes & create compost for farms in Surrey as a by-product, in turn lowering those farms requirements for additional fertilisers.
