Top prep school converting food waste to energy

One of the UK's top private schools, Harrow, has been recycling plate scrapings and kitchen off-cuts and using the waste to generate energy.


The boarding school has bought in a shredder for its scraps and over the past year has sent almost 50 tonnes of waste to the country’s biggest food waste recycler, PDM waste.

The process helps divert waste from landfill while producing energy and is straightforward for staff, with kitchen workers staff dumping waste directly into the macerator which in turn feeds into PDM’s bins which are collected each week.

Julia Tyler, domestic bursar at Harrow School, commented: “Food waste recycling isn’t confined to those with massive amounts of food waste such as retailers and food manufacturers.

“As we’ve recycled more and more of our waste, organic waste was the last and possibly the biggest challenge.

“While we constantly look at reducing the amount of waste at the outset, PDM has enabled us to make some significant environmental savings and the system has been easy to implement for our kitchen staff – which is always an important consideration as time is in short supply when providing three meals and snacks for more than 800 pupils and 300 staff every day.”

The school’s food recycling has produced around 1,250Kw of power to date.

Sam Bond

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