Nairn’s Oatcakes achieves 90% recycling rate

Nairn's Oatcakes is making good progress on a zero waste to landfill ambition - achieving a recycling rate of 90% for waste generated from its Edinburgh manufacturing sites.


The oatcake manufacturer identified a number of waste streams going to landfill as recyclable, with packaged food waste found to provide the main recycling stream.

As a result, it now recycles all packaged food waste into renewable energy through anaerobic digestion (AD), which also reduces its waste bills. It also delivers recyclables to a MRF in Broxburn where the waste is further sorted to recover additional recyclate.

It intends to continue this progress by working in partnership with recycling and resource management business William Tracey Group, which carried out an in-depth audit of Nairn’s operations at its two Edinburgh sites.

In addition to waste reduction, William Tracey also identified that carbon emission savings could be made through reducing the number of recycling bin collections to one per week.

Narin’s environmental manager Russell Clink said: “The partnership with William Tracey has allowed us to approach our recycling operation in a planned and logical manner. We are not afraid to try different approaches, confident that if something is not working as envisaged we can quickly implement changes as required.”

Carys Matthews

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