Category: Waste (Page 5 of 5)

How to deal with food waste: Introducing the Wormery

March 24, 2017 / Maria Rabanser

For most of us, food waste is an everyday reality. Whether it is buying vegetables we can’t quite finish, or cooking too much pasta or rice, it is hard to avoid. At Champion Hill Residence, students have two great alternatives to throwing food waste in the general waste bin – and one of them involves some very interesting ‘pets’.

Composting bin

In September this year, the Champion Hill team sent out emails to new residents to see if anyone was interested in a food composting project. Since then, 22 kitchens signed up and picked up their food waste caddies – that’s 25% of residents! The composting bin is located in the courtyard of Beech block, and open at the bottom to make it possible for insects to get inside and help the composting process. And it’s not just for food waste: paper and cardboard make composting more efficient – and less smelly.

The Wormery

But, hidden from sight, there is another way of breaking down food waste: a Wormery. In a wormery, a colony of worms eats through the food waste. While it might not sound nice, worms are highly efficient at dealing with waste, and leave behind useful by-products in the form of fertiliser for plants. The residence’s Sustainability Champion Holly found out about wormeries while researching food composting, and loved the idea. At the moment, the Champion Hill wormery is home to around 480 red tiger worms – a number that is expected to increase rapidly once the worms start breeding in the warmer months.

The healthy worm diet

They eat most things we eat: vegetables and fruit, peelings, bread, cake, and even pizza. To make sure they get a healthy diet, the team has placed a ‘worm menu’ next to the wormery (see picture). How quickly food waste is composted depends on the temperature: At the moment, worm activity is lower due to the cold, but activity and composting is expected to speed up when it gets warmer. And it turns out worms are not very demanding pets. Even though you do need to add a handful of lime mix every couple of weeks to prevent acid build-up (and to help the worms’ digestion!), once worms are fed they can be left alone for a few weeks.

The container is sealed, and liquid can be taken out through a tap at the bottom, which prevents the nasty smells we often associate with composting bins. This liquid is also rich in nutrients. Diluted, it can be sprayed onto plants as fertiliser.

And much like in conventional composting bins, the solid material worms leave behind can also be used to fertilise plants. Both the composting bin and wormery are relatively new, but once the fertiliser from both of them is ready in the spring/summer, the Champion Hill team plans to make the most of it.

Inside the wormery – no worms visible due to cold weather

One idea is to set up a herb garden in the residence, making the space more interesting for students, as well as adding to the biodiversity of the courtyard. If you have been at Champion Hill recently, you will have seen the early stages of this project. As a university, we are constantly working on improving our environmental footprint. Efforts such as the food composting projects by the Sustainability Champion Holly and the rest of the Champion Hill team are an excellent example of how this can be achieved through new and sometimes unusual ideas.

Resident at Champion Hill and want to compost food waste? Make sure you know what you can and cannot dispose of at Champion Hill by contacting the residence team. The composting bin is located in the courtyard of Beech block. The wormery is not directly open to students to make sure the worms get the correct diet, but food waste from participating kitchens is taken there by staff.

Sustainability Week events announced!

January 19, 2017 / Maria Rabanser

As you might have seen across our social media channels, we have announced the details of Sustainability Week 2017, which will take place from the 6th to the 10th of February.

Under the theme of ‘Waste not, want not’, we are organising a week of exciting events with King’s Money Mentors, Careers & Employability, charities, ethical brands and student societies. Highlights include a Sustainability Roadshow visiting all campuses, bike auctions, panel debates and careers events focused on careers in sustainability. Check out the detailed timetable of all events below:

For more information, including links to Facebook events, head to this page. We hope to see you at some of our events!

A Visit to Veolia’s Recycling Facilities

December 12, 2016 / Maria Rabanser

by Wendela Schim van der Loeff

On Friday morning, the King’s Sustainability Team and its Champions visited Veolia’s Integrated Waste Management Facilities (IWMF) in Southwark. Veolia is our waste contractor who services all of Southwark and many other parts of London. Operating under a circular economy business principle, Veolia seeks to turn waste back into resources that power our homes and industry. Waste to landfill is removed from the waste process and replaced by recycling or energy from waste. In smart societies of the future, Veolia sees production and consumption going hand-in-hand and one person’s waste will become another’s resource. Its aim is to further incorporate sustainable thought into the waste process, where the resources sector can make a realistic 10% contribution to the UK’s 2027 carbon reduction targets, through the decarbonisation of energy and its circular economy.

The Sustainability Team and Champions at IWMF

Upon arrival at the Veolia site, the team was given an overview of the waste manager’s practices and operations within the waste and energy sectors, across London. Located in Southwark, this facility is able to process all of Southwark’s household waste and recyclables, helping to significantly improve recycling rates and reduce the impact that the borough’s waste has on the environment. The facility enables Veolia to divert the majority of Southwark’s waste away from landfill and provides energy to local social housing. We got to see the processes our recycles and general waste all go through as well as all the sustainability work Veolia does.

The facility comprises of 5 major areas:

The Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) sorts recyclables collected from households.
The Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) facility turns black bag waste into a fuel for energy recovery.
The Reuse and Recycling Centre (RRC) supports waste prevention through a variety of reuse schemes.
The Transfer Station (TS) provides a collection point for any materials that cannot be treated on site.
The Recycling Discovery Centre (RDC) offers educational opportunities designed especially for primary school children.

Inside the IWMF. The materials are processed through disc screens, which separates resources.

The Southwark treatment facility operates across a number of waste types. At the MRF, waste is split between cardboard, glass, juice cartons and more. 50% of recycled waste is sold to brokers in the UK and the other 50% is sold abroad.

The majority of King’s waste is taken for treatment by Veolia and it manages the majority of waste across London’s boroughs. How can King’s and its staff and students help mitigate waste from landfill and improve the value retained from waste, i.e. the recycling process?

– Those living in residences should be reminded what they can recycle (plastics, cardboard, glass, paper, tins, juice cartons). Batteries, clothing and electrical items can also be recycled at residences, but not in kitchen bins.

– During the sorting process, Veolia cannot take any risks with food contamination. This implies that when a pizza box is still intact and closed, it will not be recycled as there is a significant chance of it containing pizza leftovers. When you recycle your pizza boxes, make sure to flat pack them or take them apart.

– Remember that plastic carrier bags should not go in the recycling bin! They have to be picked out at the Materials Recovery Facility, as they could cause problems by getting stuck in the machinery. Drop them off at the designated plastic bag recycling point at your local supermarket instead.

The best Black Friday bargain? Not buying into it!

November 24, 2016 / Maria Rabanser

In the US, Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving – has been regarded as one of the biggest shopping days of the year since 1932, with news reports and viral videos of fights breaking out at large stores being a regular fixture. Some retailers such as Amazon and Asda started bringing Black Friday to the UK in the 2000s, and more stores joined in 2014. In 2015, sales between Black Friday and Cyber Monday were £3.3. billion.

This surge in sales, particularly in electronics, can have huge environmental impacts. Their production is often resource-intensive, while lifespans are short, and disposal is often problematic. WRAP, a UK-based charity, estimates that a third of electronics we throw away end up in landfill.

Source: Hubbub Foundation

Clothes can be a problem too, with large amounts being thrown away every day. And many of us seem to not enjoy Black Friday as much as retailers are trying to tell us: Polls by the charity Hubbub suggest that 2 in 3 people say they do not enjoy Black Friday, and 6 in 10 said they bought things they never used.

So what are the alternatives?

More businesses and charities are now promoting the idea of either using Black Friday as an opportunity to only buy something they were planning to buy anyway, or to stay away from shops (and online stores!) entirely, and spend the day in a different way.

Source: Patagonia

American outdoors store REI will close its doors on Black Friday, and encourages customers to #OptOutside and spend the day outdoors, while Patagonia announced it will donate all Black Friday sales to environmental grassroots groups. Hubbub will run a series of #BrightFriday events to remind us that instead of buying something new, we should find new ways of using what we already have.

If you do want to make the most of Black Friday discounts, WRAP recommends SMART shopping:

Shortlist – Research products you want to buy in advance.

Make a decision – Choose the product you want to go for before you go out.

Act! – Don’t impulse buy, stick to your plan and the products you researched.

Register – For appliances, register your new purchase online as a safety precaution, and you might be entitled to an extended warranty by the manufacturer.

Trade-in – Trade your old products to save money on your new purchases. If something is broken, make sure you recycle it. RecycleNow have a handy guide to find your nearest recycling point!

With Christmas, and the high levels of waste and packaging that come with it, around the corner, opting out of excessive shopping on Black Friday is the first step towards a more sustainable festive season. Adopting a more sustainable approach to consumption will also contribute to achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production. How will you be spending the day?

#WorldFoodDay2016

October 14, 2016 / kcl sustainability

One of the biggest issues related to climate change is food security. The world’s poorest – many of whom are farmers, fishers and pastoralists – are being hit by higher temperatures and an increasing frequency in destructive weather events, such as floods and hurricanes.

At the same time, the global population is growing steadily at a rate of 1.13% per year (this is currently estimated to be an average change of 80 million people per year!). Global population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050. There is a constant increase in the number of mouths to feed and the world’s resources are struggling to meet such a heavy demand.

According to the World Bank, the number of impoverished people will grow from the current 702 million to around a billion by 2030. Out of this increase, 100 million will become poor solely because of food price increases caused by climatic change. Agriculture and food systems will need to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change and become more resilient, productive and sustainable. This is the only way that we can ensure the wellbeing of ecosystems and rural populations and reduce emissions.

Growing food in a sustainable way means adopting practices that produce more with less in the same area of land and use natural resources wisely. It also means reducing food losses before the final product or retail stage through a number of initiatives including better harvesting, storage, packing, transport, infrastructure, market mechanisms, as well as institutional and legal frameworks.

This is why this year’s global message for World Food Day 2016 is:

At the UN Sustainable Development summit in September 2015, 193 countries pledged to end hunger in the next 15 years. With unprecedented speed and breakthroughs such as the US and China’s ratification, the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change is set to enter into force. This also entails the global goal for achieving zero hunger by 2030 – an ambitious goal and one that cannot be reached without addressing climate change.

Our collective task is now to turn commitments into action on the ground. Everyone has a role to play in mitigating the effects of climate change; even individuals such as yourself – staff and students at King’s – can make a difference. We shouldn’t be waiting around for countries to act but

start living by the change we want to see in the world.

Here are a number of easy actions that you can take to help improve the shocking reality of our consumption behaviour (source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations).

Did you know livestock contributes to nearly two thirds of agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and 78% of agricultural methane emissions? By being a conscientious and ethical consumer and changing simple day-to-day habits such as your meat consumption, little effort on your part can have an impact on a larger scale! Start by trying to eat one all-veggie meal (including pulses like lentils, beans, peas and chickpeas) instead of one meat meal a week. Way more natural resources are used to produce the meat on the supermarket shelves than plants or pulses, especially water! Millions of acres of rainforest are also slashed and burned to create grass pastures for livestock, so that we can eat a burger… Say no to your weekly steak and discover some new meals that might surprise you!

Over 1/3 of food produced worldwide is lost or wasted. That equates to approximately 1.3 billion tonnes per year. All this food waste causes methane to be emitted during the rotting process, which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide! Whenever you have leftovers, don’t throw them away! Ask for a doggy bag and bring last night’s dinner for lunch into work/lectures. In supermarkets, pick the ugly fruit and vegetables that might otherwise go to waste, if you are using it that same day. Funny fruit and veg are often thrown away because they don’t meet cosmetic standards, but in fact, they taste the same! There are also some great ways to share your food with others who may be hungry. OLIO is an app that allows you to connect with people who may have a surplus of something and allows you to share your surplus with (other) hungry students.

Number 3 - Wendela SvdL Deforestation and forest degradation account for an estimated 10-11% of global GHG emissions. In the digital age that we live in, there is no need for King’s to be printing as much as it does. Collect scrap paper and use it for drawing and notes. At the start of the new academic year, shop for notebooks made out of recycled paper! When you buy paper – printer paper, paper towels, toilet paper, etc. – make sure they are forest-friendly and try to buy furniture that is made from sustainably sourced timber. Little things like that can reduce our environmental footprint and make a big difference.

For more tips on what you can do to improve food security in the future, check out the U.N.’s pages on World Food Day, 2016! Enjoy some meat-free meals and have a great weekend!

Wendela Schim van der Loeff, Sustainability Projects Assistant

GSTT Dental Link Nurse Team win Sustainability Award

June 7, 2016 / kcl sustainability

The already prestigious Guy’s and St Thomas’ Dental Institute has one more reason to be seen as world leading! As well as training 20% of all dentists in England, the Dental Link Nurse team is now saving £40,000 annually in material waste costs. This great example of sustainable practise has won them an NHS Sustainability Award.

Savings

The Nurse team found plenty of ways to reduce expenditure and waste so that more of the budget could be used to enhance care and training. By switching from exam kits to the just required mirrors for consultant clinics they saved around £500 a week on procurement and over £70 on waste.

Other changes such as transitioning from disposable to reusable gallipots, labelling bins and an atmosphere more excited in sustainability lead to an equivalent of 56 tonnes less carbon emissions from waste incineration as well as saving £42,000 over the past year which has been fed back into the department.

Future Plans

The Dental Link Nurse team hopes to expand their savings to other clinical teams. By stressing the savings and communicating their successes to the rest of the Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Foundation NHS trust departments hopefully this great success will be replicated.

Charles Pegg, Sustainability Projects Assistant

KCL Sustainability Veolia Trip

May 10, 2016 / kcl sustainability

Jessie Hardcastle, Jo Cassidy, Charles Pegg, Harry Warner, Beth Fuller, Richard Burgess

This Monday a group of King’s College Staff visited Veolia, our waste contractor who services all of Southwark. We got to see the processes our recyclables and general waste all go through (about 20,000KG each week) as well as all the sustainability work Veolia does.

Landfill Waste

If all the recyclables and general waste Veolia received went to landfill that would be the equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of CO₂each year but one of their main accomplishments is their lack of landfill waste. All general waste they receive are transferred to the SELCHPs (South-East London Combined Heat and Power) incinerator and produce heat and power (saving up to 8,000 tonnes of CO₂ each year). Similarly other waste this yields has been used to produce steel and limestone to fill mine shafts.

Biodiversity Projects

To support local biodiversity Veolia has several schemes for wildlife. Birds, bats and beetles are all accommodated for with roosting boxes while on the flora end over 100 trees and 10,000 shrubs have been planted. Serum mats also provide an artificial, green roof habitat over the building’s rooftop.

Building Sustainability

The Southwark Integrated Waste Management Facility was built with sustainability in mind. 25% of the materials in its construction came were from recycled sources and its rooftop solar panels provide 20% of the buildings energy requirements. Meanwhile grey water is used for car washing and toilets in the resource centre while smart taps limit any fresh water use.

Education

The Veolia plant also does plenty to educate local members of community. They hold regular site tours to those interested but they put notable effort in appealing to primary schools to engage with young children about the importance of recycling properly.

While we can always improve our waste management systems (only a third of what Veolia receives is put in recycling bins) it is good to see our partners at Veolia attempting to improve the sustainability on their end.

Charles Pegg, Sustainability Projects Assistant

KCL Sustainability: Green Labs

April 13, 2016 / kcl sustainability

While King’s has been greatly investing in its broad sustainability agenda, there has also been a drive to innovate in our laboratories. Despite covering just over 10% of our floor space, our labs are spread across all 4 campuses and use a disproportionately large amount of energy and water, as well as produce dangerous chemical waste.

To address this untapped area, Kings has invested in over the past 18 months in a post to lead in this area as well as invested in the projects highlighted. Here are just some of the scheme’s we’ve recently implemented to improve the efficiency of King’s labs.

Savawatt Installations

This £38,000 installation project saw 584 Savawatt controls being installed into our research fridges and freezers which saves about £15,000 each year (and roughly 68 tonnes of CO2) meaning it pays back its cost in about 2.5 years.

Green Impact: Lab Sustainability Champions

Just like in our King’s offices, our lab staff take part in an awards programme which helps reduce energy, water and general waste across the labs. They also get audited for their work at the end of greeni_logo each year for an award promoting an environment of commitment to sustainability.

This year 20 teams are participating which is the most laboratory teams for any university in the UK.

Drying Cabinet Exchange

33 old uninsulated drying cabinets were consolidated and replaced by 28 insulated efficient models, paying back our investment in 4 years and achieving £15,000 of annual savings.

blogfumecup Fume Cupboard Management Policy

Already applied to new fume cupboard installations, this technical policy will take over a year to implement but will result in hundreds of thousands of pounds saved!

Cold Storage Policy

Our laboratories are subject to a ‘Cold Storage Policy’ which is used at other universities such as Oxford amongst others. This promotes efficient, safe and sustainable practise for using the research laboratory fridges and freezers.

Current/Future Endeavours

Continued installation and refurbishment of fume cupboards and ventilations systems
Introduction of Warp-it system for redistributing unwanted resources among other institutions such as UCL who have been very successful with the system
Joint UCL/KCL procurement mini-tenders

More to come!

Look to our case studies on our labs page for summaries of all the above projects and plenty more to come, including a variety of small projects lead by local lab staff (timer installations, equipment exchanges, UPS installation, freezer warm-ups, waterless condensers and more).

If interested in our growing collection of case studies see here:

You can also contact our Research Efficiency Officer Martin Farley (martin.farley@kcl.ac.uk)

Veolia’s Southwark Integrated Waste Facility Tour

September 22, 2015 / kcl sustainability

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend a tour of Veolia’s waste treatment facility. Veolia operates under a ‘circular economy’ business principle, whereby waste to landfill is removed from the waste process, and replaced by recycling or energy from waste. This aims to further incorporate sustainable thought into the waste process, with Veolia stating that adopting this circular economy principle could inject £29 billion (1.8% of GDP) into the UK economy, alongside the creation of an extra 175,000 jobs.

On the day, we were given opening talks by various managers across Veolia’s operations who discussed their practices within the waste and energy sectors. This involved presentations into the innovative solutions that Veolia has adopted, such as recycling street sweepings (e.g. cans/ plastics for general recycling and twigs/leaves for biodegradation). This is done through a process of wet and dry separation, which diverts 85-90 % of street sweepings from landfill.

The materials being processed through disc screens, which separates resources.

The Southwark treatment facility operates across a number of waste types, with 50% of recycled waste sold to brokers in the UK and the other 50% abroad. Waste is split between cardboard, glass, juice cartons and more, showing how value can be derived from waste.

Veolia’s Southwark waste treatment facility is located near Old Kent Road (SE15 1AL) and serves as the main recycling point for the borough at a number of locations across King’s

Veolia’s Southwark waste treatment facility is located near Old Kent Road (SE15 1AL) and serves as the main recycling point for the borough and a number of locations across King’s.

With a large amount of King’s waste taken for treatment by Veolia, how can King’s help to mitigate waste from landfill?

Students in residences should be reminded that they can recycle plastics, cardboard, glass, paper, tins, tetrapak (juice cartons) in recycling bins located in shared kitchens. Batteries, clothing and electrical items (phone chargers, printers etc.) can also be recycled at residences, but not in kitchen bins.

The new bins!

New recycling bins have just been rolled out across Champion Hill residences. Stamford Street Apartments and Great Dover Street Apartments will also be receiving new recycling bins on the 28th September.

If you are unsure about how to recycle any waste, please contact your residence manager or email the Sustainability team at sustainability@kcl.ac.uk.

Rhianne Menzies, Sustainability Projects Assistant

Make money from your waste – A guide to leaving halls

June 4, 2015 / kcl sustainability

As the academic year is coming to an end and we prepare for the summer, there’s lot to do in regards to changing accommodation. Of course spending those last weeks with are friends is the very important, meaning that packing is normally left to the last minute. Our energy assistant, Bolaji Olaniru has written some tips for you to help with your move!

Packing!!!

So you might not want to take all your items with you when you leave. You might want to get rid of books, old bags, clothes, shoes, hair dryers, whatever! But wait a minute; don’t just throw these items away! You could make some money on these or help those in need – but most importantly recycling your stuff will save a lot of energy and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

And it’s so easy. You’ll have three types of stuff to consider when you leave: Things you want to keep, useful items that you don’t want an obvious waste (which could still be recycled – check out our website for what can and can’t be recycled at King’s).

Items that can be reuse (e.g. clothes and books) charity shops are a great place to start. Why not try a couple of these:

Local Charity shops

These are good for most items such as shoes, clothes and books. We recommend you check before about electrical goods (see below for more options).

Guy’s Campus http://www.hotriccharityshop.com/ – 52 Tower Bridge Rd, London SE1 4TR

Denmark Hill Campus: http://www.scope.org.uk/ – 42 Denmark Hill, Camberwell, London SE5 1JL

Strand Campus: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/ – 23 Drury lane, WC2B 5RH

Waterloo Campus and St Thomas’: http://www.tht.org.uk/ -14-15 Lower Marsh, SE1 7RJ

Collection from residences

If you would like someone to collect from your residence instead, you can book collections.

For Clothes look at: http://www.traid.org.uk/clothes-recycling/book-a-collection/

For other Items get out the Gov website: https://www.gov.uk/recycling-collections

Or why not post you items onto Free Cycle? People come and collect you stuff for free J

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)

You can drop off small handheld electrical items (smaller than 25 X 31 cm) such as hair dryers, computer keyboards, toasters and kettles in various WEEE bank locations: http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/10070/recycling/2550/weee_banks. For really bulky items given them a ring on 020 7525 2000 and they can come and collect for you.

You can also use the King’s service for collecting WEEE waste by completing this form.

Selling your books, CDs, mobile phones and DVDs

Did you know you can sell all of these online and make a bit of money too? All you need to do is log them online and then take them to a local collection point (often a post office or corner shop)

Check out a few of these:

For books, CDs, DVDs, games, electronics and mobiles: Zapper For old mobiles: Mazuma For electronics (mobiles, CDs etc): Music Magpie

Check out Facebook groups for you subjects as well as to sell your old text books – Fresher’s are always looking to buy them e.g. Geography or even Physics.

Still not sure what to do with your waste? Contact us at Sustainability@kcl.ac.uk or call 0207 848 7302 for more help and advice.