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The Business of Recycling England. WRAP England
Guidance for Facilities Management
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Why you need to recycle and what to recycle

Preventing waste in the first place

In accordance with the waste hierarchy, waste prevention should always be considered ahead of recycling.

Here are a number of ways you can reduce the amount of waste generated at your facilities include: 

  • Providing e-tickets, electronic guides and maps for visitors; 

  • Stipulate the use of recyclable or recycled products in the conditions of trade for promotional materials or for food service products; 

  • Encouraging caterers or vendors to provide refillable cups or glasses, set up a deposit and return scheme for reusable drinks containers, or encourage attendees to bring their own cups offering a discount for drinks; 

  • Providing refill stations for drinking water; 

  • Restricting what products visitors, suppliers, vendors or caterers can bring to the venue. Discourage single use items such as sauce, milk, sugar or coffee sachets and 

  • Encourage caterers to donate surplus or unsold stock – donate surplus food to charity or have an employee fridge for products that they can eat or take home free of charge during and at the end of the event. Guidance is available on How food businesses must dispose of food and former foodstuffs.

Good to Know 

  • A Greener Future- a certification scheme helping venues, events, sports venues  and festivals become eco-friendly and sustainable. 

  • Future Festival tools- resources, tools and training for the events industry to help reduce the industry’s environmental impact. 

  • Plastic packaging in the hospitality and food service industry provides many challenges and opportunities, the UK Plastics Pact has four targets working towards a world where plastic is valued. There are actions you can take to achieve these targets. 

  • The Food waste reduction roadmap toolkit  provides actions to help you reduce food waste. To see what others have done, go to Hospitality and food service case studies

  • If you are looking for ideas of what to do with leftover food, Surplus food hub  can help. 

  • As well as providing support for water refill the Refill Campaign also provides information via the Refill App to help users locate outlets that support ways to borrow, return and reuse when shopping or out and about.