Wirral waterfront venue opened at Woodside Ferry Terminal in June with six different food concessions and was keen to manage food waste more effectively. Tony McDonough reports

Wirral waterfront’s Woodside Ferry Village food and drink venue has installed a food waste station in a push to minimise its environmental impact,

With the help of local waste management firm, B&M Waste Services, Woodside Ferry Village has installed the facility which will help it manage the food waste from its six different food concessions and cut its carbon footprint.

The waste station has food from a caddy scraped in, before food waste is macerated into a liquid form and pumped directly into a built-in de-watering system, forcing out excess liquid.

This liquid is fed directly into the drain resulting in a greatly reduced volume of food waste, which is then collected in small, easily managed, lidded bins, ready for onward processing at an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant.

AD produces biogas, a methane-rich gas that can be used as a fuel, and digestate, a source of nutrients that can be used as a fertiliser. The process reduces waste volume by 80%, thus reducing the frequency of waste collections and therefore both cost and the carbon footprint.

Sharon Stanton, managing director at Woodside Ferry Village, which opened in June this year, said: “It was always key to our business plan for Woodside Ferry Village that, wherever possible, we should look to reduce our carbon footprint and introduce initiatives which would support this.

“B&M helped us to move forward and we can see clear advantages through using the B&M Food Waste Station, such as short processing times creating lower operating costs, a self cleaning system reducing staff time managing and processing any food waste, and lower waste collection costs by up to 80% through reducing food waste volume and weight requiring collection.”

David Carter, account manager at B&M, added: “Having been carbon neutral since 2011, minimising the environmental impact of business waste is our priority. We are working with more and more businesses looking to minimise their food waste output.”