Canford Heath in Dorset was in the spotlight yesterday as supermarket chain Asda unveiled its first-ever “zero waste” store.
Asda announced that the store is the first of it’s kind and will become the first supermarket in the UK to send all of its waste for recycling, or composting.
The US owned chain currently recycles about a 20 per cent of the general waste it produces, which is mostly cardboard and plastic packaging, with the rest going to landfill sites.
Currently Asda recovers or recycles around 140,000 tonnes of cardboard packaging each year and 5,500 tonnes of plastic packaging, but the aim is to recycle around 65% of the general waste from its 313 stores. This will mean an extra 58,000 tonnes of material being recycled each year.
Environment manager at Asda, Simon Fern, explained, “By using specially-designed composting we’re able to take all the waste food from the back of our store and turn it into good quality organic compost. As a result, 150 tonnes of general waste will be diverted from local landfill each year.”
By 2010 Asda hopes to have all it’s UK stores handle their waste in the same manner.
The supermarket has teamed up with its waste management contractor, Veolia Environmental Services, and a local waste treatment company, New Earth Solutions, to handle the waste from the store in Dorset.
New Earth Solutions is based near Poole, where its mechanical biological treatment plant will handle Asda’s food waste. The plant operates by using a combination of physical separation processes and composting to process mixed waste .
Contract director for the company, Peter Mills, commented on the link up, “We’ve spent a number of years developing recycling technologies that divert waste out of landfill sites and convert it into compost. We’re delighted to support Asda’s aim of re-using, recycling or composting all its store waste.”
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