McCain Foods - Case study: Zero waste to landfill
Reducing waste is one of McCain Foods' principal
environmental objectives and where possible it aims
to divert all waste from landfill through more efficient
processing at its factories and through increased recycling.
Currently less than 1% of food and packaging waste from
McCain's production is disposed of in landfill and it is
working to reduce this figure on an annual basis.
Investment in new equipment at its factories has resulted
in a major reduction in the amount of potato lost during
peeling and cutting. At its Whittlesey plant, potato, starch
and particles in waste water are sent to an anaerobic
lagoon on site where they are turned into biogas, and the residual solid waste
used as fertiliser. At its other
plants, edible production waste is sent to animal feed.
And used sunflower oil from cooking is sold for biofuel for
transportation purposes.
McCain has recently set up a system for handling unusable
packaged product which enables both the food and the
packaging elements to be separated and recycled. All
cardboard packing cases are produced from recycled
material and waste cases at its factories go to recycling.
McCain's aim is to send no food or packaging waste
to landfill by 2015 in line with the FDF's Five-fold
Environmental Ambition.
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