27 SUSTAINABILTY
Reducing waste and minimising greenhouse gas emissions are undoubtedly important goals, but the digester can achieve more than that, says Giacchetti. The Eco-Safe Digester is saving UK businesses money, increasing revenues, and providing them with a competitive advantage while improving their operating efficiency. And its not just operational cost savings – sustainability generates top line value too. Research indicates that when customers are presented with the choice of similar shopping, dining or hotel options, they tend to pick the one they perceive as more sustainable. White Rose shopping centre in Leeds installed an Eco-Safe food waste digester in November 2015 to increase the sustainability profile of the centre and secure significant cost savings. The model Eco-Safe 12 unit, designed to digest between 300 and 1,090kg of food waste during a 24-hour period, was installed in the centre’s waste room adjacent to the main food destination. It converts food waste into water, which is conveniently and safely discharged to a standard drain. The digester is connected to a settlement tank to recover any fat, grease or oils. The centre’s facility managers report that their wet waste disposal costs have reduced by two thirds from their pre-EcoSafe Digester days when costs were over £4,000 per month. Almost all food waste generated on site is now diverted to the Eco-Safe Digester system.
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Key to all food waste onsite being diverted through the digester, is that waste that had been compacted as general waste, including food waste, has now been eliminated. Cardboard and DMR (Dry Mixed Recycling) waste is easily being segregated and is now clean from food contamination, allowing the centre to generate income from the clean cardboard, and the DMR waste is now collected at half the price compared to what was previously paid for general waste to be collected. The general waste proportion has been reduced from 56 per cent to 8 per cent. In addition to reducing its waste food removal costs, the White Rose centre reported considerable additional benefits including: improved recycling and reduced general waste, improved cleanliness, reduced spillages and spilt bags, no slippery floors, no smells, no flies or vermin, reduced manual handling, improvements to health & safety and cleaner corridors. On top of the environmental and economic advantages of onsite food waste digestion, users are also provided with detailed live data to help support their efforts to improve efficiencies. The reporting by restaurant feature from the BioHiTech Cloud enables the centre to measure and monitor individual tenants’ food waste and raise awareness in order to work with retailers to reduce food waste and improve recycling. Since installation, the digester at White Rose has been viewed and followed by a number of shopping centres across the country with the roll-out process now underway to other shopping centres and retail parks as part of their strong sustainability initiatives. “These guys have taken their first machines over the last 12 months and we’re getting to the point now where the conversations we’re having with them are developing quite nicely because they’ve now been able to see the results of the technology,” says Giacchetti. Since White Rose shopping centre has been able to prove the effectiveness of digester technology in improving waste separation and recycling rates, Market Place Bolton, Victoria Gate in Leeds and Westfield Stratford City in London have all adopted the technology, with a strong pipeline of other shopping centres and retail parks about to come on board with this disruptive technology. The proof is in the numbers. In the past 12 months White Rose, Market Place, Victoria Gate and Westfield Stratford have diverted a combined 190 tonnes of food waste, translating into an equivalent saving of: 29.7 waste trucks off the road, 159 cubic metres of landfill space, 148 metric tonnes of Carbon Dioxide equivalent, and 62,773 litres of fuel, which is the equivalent of travelling 624,519 miles or 1,500 trips between Edinburgh and London.
JANUARY 2017 SHOPPING CENTRE