Background
Robert Wiseman Dairies is a leading supplier of fresh liquid milk to a number of the country’s largest retailers. Processing over 1.5billion litres of milk every year and employing over 4,500 people means that we generate a sizeable amount of waste, most of which was previously being sent to landfill.
After a successful trial, the company is now working towards achieving zero waste to landfill from all its 23 sites.
How the issue was tackled
Initially we embarked on a trial at one of our dairy production sites and began identifying alternative routes for the waste to ensure it was recycled rather than sent to landfill. This in turn generated issues around segregating and storing different types of waste.
However, a number of recycling points were set up throughout the site and one central area was designated as the hub of the trial, where waste is stored for collection.
Once the infrastructure was in place, the process of changing behaviour began and challenging the assumption that waste is inevitable. The success of the trial, where levels of recycling rose from 17% of all waste to over 90%, has led to a template being developed and rolled out to all company sites.
We no longer have waste, we have resources!
Benefits and impacts
There are huge environmental and social benefits to cutting waste - landfill sites are filling up rapidly so making changes that limit and eventually eliminate our need to landfill waste materials is critical.
With landfill charges increasing all the time, there are significant financial benefits from minimising waste sent to landfill. In addition, we are working as an industry to set a standard for using recycled plastic in our packaging, therefore there is a need to maximise the amount of plastic being recycled.
Advice to others
It is important to identify the necessary recycling partners at the start of the process, put the necessary infrastructure in place and arrange staff training before getting the plan up and running.
Achieving zero waste to landfill is a long incremental process that will never be achieved overnight!
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