A huge space of waste

Accord­ing to Respect Food (2021), approx­i­mate­ly sev­en mil­lion tonnes of food are wast­ed in the UK every year. Dur­ing the Christ­mas peri­od, two mil­lion turkeys, five mil­lion Christ­mas pud­dings, and 74 mil­lion mince pies get dis­posed while still edi­ble, caus­ing almost 270,000 tons of food waste. If you’ve got left­over food, recy­cle it. But where does it go when you do? Well, often it will go to an In-Ves­sel Com­post­ing (IVC) facil­i­ty to be turned into com­post for a range of agri­cul­tur­al and hor­ti­cul­tur­al applications. 

In the UK, resource man­age­ment com­pa­ny, Veo­lia cur­rent­ly process­es over 500,000 tonnes of gar­den and food waste every year. We paid a vis­it to their huge Pad­worth IVC just west of Lon­don, which has the capac­i­ty to process up to 32,000 tonnes of gar­den and food waste, sav­ing 960 tonnes of CO2 equiv­a­lent. Vir­tu­al­ly all of the com­post they pro­duce is used by farms with­in a 20-mile radius of the site. 

Sara Per­ry, Veo­lia Strat­e­gy Man­ag­er, Treat­ment took us through the eight-week, four-step process:

SHRED­DING: The waste is shred­ded to make it a con­sis­tent size and allow the move­ment of air and mois­ture through it.

SANI­TI­SA­TION: The shred­ded waste is loaded into the tun­nel process sys­tem. Our tech­nol­o­gy mon­i­tors air flow, heat lev­els and mois­ture 24 hours a day. It heats to over 65°C, sani­tis­ing the waste and killing any pathogens.

STA­BIL­I­SA­TION: The com­post­ing mate­r­i­al is moved out of the tun­nels and into the huge sta­bil­i­sa­tion area, where it sits on an air sys­tem, encour­ag­ing the bio­log­i­cal break- down of the food and gar­den waste to continue.

MAT­U­RA­TION AND SCREEN­ING: After the mate­r­i­al has passed qual­i­ty checks, it’s ready to be screened. Screen­ing is essen­tial­ly a huge sieve which sep­a­rates the fine high- qual­i­ty com­post­ing mate­r­i­al from the over­sized mate­r­i­al. The fine mate­r­i­al is now ready to go to farm­ers or gar­den centres.

Sara Per­ry, Veo­lia Strat­e­gy Man­ag­er, Treat­ment took us through the eight-week, four-step process:

SHRED­DING: The waste is shred­ded to make it a con­sis­tent size and allow the move­ment of air and mois­ture through it.

SANI­TI­SA­TION: The shred­ded waste is loaded into the tun­nel process sys­tem. Our tech­nol­o­gy mon­i­tors air flow, heat lev­els and mois­ture 24 hours a day. It heats to over 65°C, sani­tis­ing the waste and killing any pathogens.

STA­BIL­I­SA­TION: The com­post­ing mate­r­i­al is moved out of the tun­nels and into the huge sta­bil­i­sa­tion area, where it sits on an air sys­tem, encour­ag­ing the bio­log­i­cal break- down of the food and gar­den waste to continue.

MAT­U­RA­TION AND SCREEN­ING: After the mate­r­i­al has passed qual­i­ty checks, it’s ready to be screened. Screen­ing is essen­tial­ly a huge sieve which sep­a­rates the fine high- qual­i­ty com­post­ing mate­r­i­al from the over­sized mate­r­i­al. The fine mate­r­i­al is now ready to go to farm­ers or gar­den centres.

A ver­sion of this sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Sand­wich Mag­a­zine Issue 6: The Left­overs Issue. You can buy the lat­est issue here or fol­low Sand­wich on Insta­gram.