Over the past five years the UK’s hospitality catering sector has undergone a remarkable transformation in how it manages recycling and food waste.
In 2020 the industry generated around 920,000 tonnes of food waste annually, much of which still went to landfill or energy recovery facilities rather than being recycled or repurposed. The financial cost was equally stark: food wasted in restaurants, cafés and contract catering schemes amounted to an estimated £3.2 billion each year – roughly £10,000 per outlet. Against this backdrop, a groundswell of operators, from high-street chains to care-home caterers, have introduced practices that only a few years ago would have been considered experimental.
Central to this shift has been the roll-out of digital food-waste measurement systems. Over the last 2 years, we have seen an increase of weighing scales and “waste-ometers” in back-of-house operations to record waste by source – pre-production, plate waste or spoilage – in real time. This data-driven approach enabled one contract caterer to redistribute 79.5 tonnes of surplus food in 2023 to charities like FareShare and Olio, equivalent to some 185,500 meals. Through recipe redesign and targeted training, these operators have continued to cut kitchen waste and inspire others to adopt similar processes.
Regulation and Compliance
Despite these advances, a 2024 survey by UKHospitality found that two-thirds of outlets still failed to segregate food waste on site for recycling or anaerobic digestion. To address this, as of 31st March 2025, all businesses, schools and hospitals with ten or more full-time employees must separate dry mixed recyclables and food waste from general refuse. This regulatory milestone is expected to raise participation rates above 80 percent by year’s end, and by 31st March 2027, all businesses, schools and hospitals with fewer than 10 employees will also be included in the legislation.
Many smaller operators and community-led ventures are not waiting until 2027 and are already leading by example. The Long Table in Gloucestershire, a not-for-profit “pay as you can” restaurant, rescued 3.4 tonnes of perfectly good food from waste streams in the past year, using it to serve 20,000 people while paying a living wage to staff. In the education sector, Chartwells has partnered with SUEZ recycling and recovery UK to deliver interactive workshops for schools in Cornwall. By introducing simple food-waste bins and quizzes, pupils and staff diverted nine kilograms of waste at a single event and now track waste across multiple sites. Meanwhile, the University of Nottingham increased its separate food-waste collection from 63 tonnes in 2021/22 to 96 tonnes in 2022/23, sending material for anaerobic digestion rather than landfill.
Looking Ahead
Looking ahead to the next five years, the hospitality sector is poised to embrace circular-economy principles more fully. Deposit Return Schemes for drinks containers, due to launch nationwide by 2027, will complement on-site recycling and drive down single-use packaging. By combining regulatory requirements with real-time data, community engagement and innovative technologies, the hospitality catering sector looks set to make recycling an integral part of mainstream operations – and to redefine what “zero waste” means in practice.
