Waste in the leisure industry

Whether you’re running a cinema or a theme park, you’re likely going to be serving food for your guests. Therefore, food waste is inevitable. According to WRAP, UK hospitality and food service outlets produce over two million tonnes of food waste each year. Of this, only 12% is recycled. By recycling the food waste your business is producing you can stop food waste from going to landfill. This is a great way of reducing your business’ carbon footprint and boosting its environmental credentials.

Food packaging, drinks cups and promotional items like posters and cardboard figures are all staples in the leisure industry. This type of waste can all be recycled as part of your dry mixed recycling so it’s important to offer ways for this to be recycled both back and front of house. Could you switch to reusable cups and put a scheme in place for customers where they’re rewarded for reusing their cup on their next visit?  If your venue requires guests to have a ticket, you could even look at switching to e-tickets to reduce the waste you’re generating even more. Or make sure your back of house area has the appropriate signage, so staff members know which bin their waste goes in. If you can educate your staff and get them on board, recycling more will be an easy task for your site..

It’s likely your site is getting lots of deliveries to keep up with your guest’s needs. Therefore, you’re probably going to have a few pallets lying around back of house. These pallets can easily be recycled to give them a brand-new life to reduce the carbon footprint of these ending up in landfill. By doing this, you could also be generating an extra income for your business. A pallet’s value will depend on their quality as well as the number of pallets you have. It’s worth keeping your pallets safe until you have enough to warrant a full collection to make the most of them. To find out more about how we can help you generate extra income from recycling your pallets, check out our lifecycle of a pallet video.

You’ll probably have toilet facilities at your site, so it’s important that you’ve considered the waste that they can generate. Everything from feminine hygiene and nappy bins to hand soap and cleaning products will need to be considered in your waste management plan to ensure your guests have a great experience at every point in their visit. We can offer discreet washroom waste collections and bin deliveries tailored to fit your site’s needs – improving the health and safety of your site and providing a welcoming and clean environment for your visitors.

Most venues in the leisure industry will have some form of electrical equipment. So, you’ll need to have a strategy in place for when your electrical goods become WEEE waste. Could you try to reuse as much equipment as you can to minimise the amount of waste you’re producing. It’s often cheaper to fix broken equipment than to replace it, so it’s worth checking before you start throwing things away. If you’ve got lots of electrical waste on your site that can’t be fixed, such as broken tills, printers or screens, try to organise a WEEE recycling collection from a licenced waste carrier. This makes sure that as much of your waste is recycled as possible to prevent it ending up in landfill.