Health and Safety for Beginners Forums

Good morning one and all,

Currently am Assistant Catering Manager at a Public School in Harrogate, and I am led to believe the regulations regarding food waste macerators are changing (1 Jan 2018?) so that food waste no longer goes down drains, similar I believe to Scottish and Northern Irish Law.

Unfortunately I am yet to find any conclusive evidence that this is the case, and until I do, we can not proceed to change our current machine.
Does anyone know where I could get the evidence I require to show the powers that hold the purse strings?

Many thanks

Adrian

I believe that there are specific Regulations for Food Waste disposal in Northern Ireland and Scotland (>5kg/wk & >50kg/wk) but that no similar regs exist in England & Wales other than the current Waste Regs.

Reduction of Waste is obligatory for any Waste producer and diversion of any waste to a second use (AD or composting perhaps) would be a good environmental project for a school. The financial argument without legislation backing it up is how much it costs you to get your drains unblocked/de-fatted regularly compared to...

We have looked at the costing of composting it, the composter unit is not small, the issue of transporting the waste from kitchen to where the composter needs to be, I believe we would have to apply for a licence to run the composter in our location, to transport the compost around the school grounds would need another licence as it would have to cross public roads, and yet another licence would be required to sell it on to parents/general public......nothing like making you jump through hoops.

I would prefer to see it composted, but the school just would not see it as viable.

I have seen compactors that extract the water from food waste and then you have to put said waste into plastic bags to go to land fill.....that sounds stupid too, unless we can get bio degradable bags.....

We will get there, just not today I guess

There may be micro-businesses who use AD in their process who would collect (possibly pay??) for food wastes provided it was sorted (meat from veg etc.) All depends on the quantity you'd have per week.
See if Wrap can point you in the direction of someone locally.

LINK

I know this posted a little while ago.

There are lots of food waste collectors that will collect the food waste and take it to an AD plant, there is a charge for this and the price normally will start around £8 per tip of a 240ltr bin. Most will not collect from larger bins than this due to the weight. If you want a bin exchange service for a clean bin you will pay more for this. If the bins are left over a week, you could get maggots (in summer you will). Bagging the waste helps with this and most sites will be ok with any type of bag. Also most sites will also take a mix of food and packaging, cooked or raw, meat of veg.

winxwinx wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 4:16 pm I know this posted a little while ago.

There are lots of food waste collectors that will collect the food waste and take it to an AD plant, there is a charge for this and the price normally will start around £8 per tip of a 240ltr bin. Most will not collect from larger bins than this due to the weight. If you want a bin exchange service for a clean bin you will pay more for this. If the bins are left over a week, you could get maggots (in summer you will). Bagging the waste helps with this and most sites will be ok with any type of bag. Also most sites will also take a mix of food and packaging, cooked or raw, meat of veg.

Hi winxwinx.

Welcome to HSfB. Many thanks for posting.

Hi everyone,

Thanks all for your thoughts and help with this, alas it seems the decision may soon be taken out of my hands, as we are being taken over by a contractor, and in the summer of 2019 the kitchen is due to be gutted out and replaced.

Thanks again