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.