The Composition of Waste Disposed of by the UK Hospitality Industry FINAL JULY 2011 GP EDIT.54efe0c9.11675

7/25/2019 The Composition of Waste Disposed of by the UK Hospitality Industry FINAL JULY 2011 GP EDIT.54efe0c9.11675

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Final report

he Composition of Waste Disposed

of by the UK Hospitality Industry

A research study to develop a method for estimating the composition ofmixed waste disposed of by pubs, restaurants, hotels and quick servicerestaurants. The report presents indicative estimates of the compositionof mixed waste sent for disposal for each UK nation.

Project code:RES093-001 ISBN: 1-84405-452-7Research date:January 2009 to July 2010 Date:July 2011


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WRAPs vision is a world without waste,where resources are used sustainably.

We work with businesses and individuals

to help them reap the benefits of reducingwaste, develop sustainable products anduse resources in an efficient way.

Find out more atwww.wrap.org.uk

Contributors to the main report

Phil Williams, Barbara Leach, Katie Christensen (WRAP) | Gary Armstrong, Darren Perrin (SKM Enviros) | Rebecca

Hawkins (CESHI Oxford Brookes University)| Andrew Lane (RLP) | Glyn Jones (ADAS) | Peter Scholes (UrbanMines)

Peer review

Robin Curry (SRI)

Front cover photography:Hotel kitchen from istockphoto.com

WRAP believes the content of this report to be correct as at the date of writing. However, factors such as prices, levels of recycled content and regulatory requirements

are subject to change and users of the report should check with their suppliers to confirm the current situation. In addition, care should be taken in using any of the cost

information provided as it is based upon numerous project-specific assumptions (such as scale, location, tender context, etc.).

The report does not claim to be exhaustive, nor does it claim to cover all relevant products and specifications available on the market. While steps have been taken to

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The Composition of Waste Disposed of by the UK Hospitality Industry 3

AcknowledgementsWRAP is grateful to everyone who contributed to the report, in particular:

the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Scottish Government, the WelshAssembly Government, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly, all of which

jointly funded the research;

the consortium comprising SKM Enviros, the Centre for Environmental Studies in the Hospitality Industry

(CESHI) at Oxford Brookes University, the University of Reading Statistical Services Centre, RLP and NTouch

for conducting the literature review, designing and administering the survey, carrying out the waste audits

and compositional analysis, and preparing the first few drafts of the report on which this final version is

heavily based;

ADAS and Urban Mines for calculating national estimates of waste arisings;

Robin Curry at SRI for carrying out the peer review;

all the members of the project steering group within WRAP and the funding bodies, but particularly Alan Bell(now retired) of the Environment Agency and David Lee of Defra for commenting on sampling and statistical

matters; and

all the anonymous hospitality premises that spared staff time to take part in the study.


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Executive summary

Background, aims and objectives

For many years it has been known that the UK hospitality sector is a significant producer of waste and that muchof this waste could be recycled or recovered.1However, because hospitality businesses tend to dispose of their

waste in a mixed form in general waste containers, not much is known about the make-up of that waste.

Knowing what the waste consists of is essential if the hospitality industry is to save money and reduce its carbon

footprint by becoming more resource-efficient. It is this knowledge gap that the research summarised in this

report seeks to address.

Although analysing the composition of waste is a commonplace activity for household waste, few previous

studies have sought to look at business waste in this way. There are significant logistical challenges as well as

confidentiality and health and safety issues to overcome, and major difficulties in ensuring that the research can

draw reliable conclusions. The research therefore had two key objectives:

1. to develop and test methods for quantifying mixed waste sent for disposal by businesses, using the UKhospitality sector as a test bed; and

2. to provide estimates of the amount of each type of waste found in the mixed waste that would normally go

to landfill.

Scope and definition

The hospitality sector is commonly split into two subsectors:

theprofit sector:businesses where providing catering and/or accommodation services is the primary

purpose of the business and where the aim is to maximise profit (e.g. hotels, guesthouses, bed & breakfast

establishments, youth hostels, restaurants, QSRs and pubs); and

thecost sector: businesses where providing hospitality services is not the main function of the organisation

and where the aim is not to maximise profit (e.g. catering and accommodation services within the premises

of schools, hospitals, prisons, military facilities etc.).

This work focuses on the profit sector and for the purposes of this research, is defined as follows:

includeshotels, restaurants, pubs and quick service restaurants (QSRs);

excludesthe leisure sector, including self-catering businesses;

excludesthe cost sector; and

excludesbusinesses that do not pay for their waste to be removed on the grounds that they will produce

only very small amounts.

Methods

The research, which was conducted in 2009 and 2010, consisted of:

a literature review to gather information to help in the development of a sampling strategy;

a collation of waste data from 60 large hospitality chains;

a telephone survey of 1660 individual business sites; and

1 For example, a 2004 Scottish survey showed that the hotels and restaurants sector produced 14% of all business andpublic sector waste in Scotland, the second most significant sector after wholesale and retail

(http://www.sepa.org.uk/waste/waste_data/commercial__industrial_waste/business_waste_surveys.aspx). Defras 2004survey found that in England the sector contributed more than 5% of business waste arisings and 11% of commercial wastearisings.


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a site audit of 138 businesses across the UK, together with removal and compositional analysis of their mixed

waste (mainly waste for disposal but also some waste for recycling where two or more materials were

collected co-mingled).

In total, 12 tonnes of mixed waste was collected from the selected hospitality businesses and sorted into 37

categories of material. The findings from the compositional analysis of this mixed waste were then used

alongside Defras 2010 survey of industrial and commercial waste, the Environment Agencys2002/03 industrialand commercial waste dataset and Office of National Statistics (ONS) business population data for 2009 to

estimate the quantity and composition of mixed waste in the UK.

The figures presented in this report should be regarded as indicativeof the waste being sent to disposal by pubs,

hotels, restaurants and quick service restaurants in the UK. The sample size is quite small and there are errors

associated with both the Defra survey data used to derive quantities and the compositional data used to estimate

the material make-up of the waste. Also, seasonal differences in waste composition could not be taken into

account in this study.

The amount of waste produced, recycled and disposed

It is estimated that in 2009 UK hotels, pubs, restaurants and QSRs produced just over 3.4 million tonnes ofwaste; of this, 1.6 million tonnes (47%) was recycled, reused or composted and nearly 1.5 (43%) million tonnes

was mixed waste that went for disposal, mainly to landfill. The remaining 10% consisted of relatively rare waste

types and disposal/treatment routes. This is shown inTable 1 below.

Table 1 The waste produced, recycled and disposed by the UK hospitality industry in 2009 by sub-sectorand nation (rounded to the nearest 1,000 tonnes)

Nation Subsector Total waste

Mixed (residual)waste

destined fordisposal

Waste destined forrecycling/reuse

Non-mixed waste ormixed waste

managed in otherways

England

Hotels 370,000 131,000 231,000 9,000

Pubs1,376,000 552,000 643,000 182,000

QSRs 202,000 88,000 110,000 3,000

Restaurants 894,000 457,000 350,000 88,000

Subtotal 2,842,000 1,228,000 1,334,000 282,000

Wales

Hotels 27,000 10,000 17,000 1,000

Pubs 89,000 35,000 41,000 12,000

QSRs 11,000 5,000 6,000 0

Restaurants 41,000 21,000 16,000 4,000

Subtotal 168,000 71,000 80,000 17,000

Scotland

Hotels 76,000 27,000 47,000 2,000

Pubs 112,000 45,000 52,000 15,000

QSRs 23,000 10,000 12,000 0

Restaurants 97,000 49,000 38,000 9,000

Subtotal 308,000 131,000 149,000 26,000

NorthernIreland

Hotels 12,000 4,000 8,000 0

Pubs 34,000 14,000 16,000 5,000

QSRs 11,000 5,000 6,000 0

Restaurants 40,000 20,000 16,000 4,000

Subtotal 97,000 43,000 46,000 9,000

UK

Hotels 485,000 171,000 303,000 11,000

Pubs 1,610,000 646,000 752,000 213,000

QSRs 246,000 108,000 135,000 4,000

Restaurants 1,072,000 548,000 419,000 105,000

UK Total 3,415,000 1,473,000 1,609,000 334,000


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Characteristics of the waste sent for disposal

Of the almost 1.5 million tonnes of waste that was sent for disposal:

businesses in England disposed of just over 1.2 million tonnes;

businesses in Scotland disposed of just under 133,000 tonnes;

businesses in Wales disposed of just over 72,000 tonnes; and

businesses in Northern Ireland disposed of just over 42,000 tonnes.

The waste disposed of, mainly to landfill, represents an opportunity for reuse, recycling and recovery; 78% of it

was made up of four potentially recyclable materials:

food (600,000 tonnes or 41%);

glass (213,000 tonnes or 14%);

paper (196,000 tonnes or 13%); and

card (134,000 tonnes or 9%).

Waste management practices

Management of waste destined for disposal is very traditional, with most companies relying on four-wheeled bins

to contain mixed waste for disposal. The use of council-provided services such as bottle banks in pub car parks is

relatively common; it may be that many of these council-run services are used without permission or payment,

and possibly illegally if the Duty of Care is not complied with. On-site waste treatment such as the use of

compactors and composting is relatively rare.

Recycling is widespread but not universal: overall, 76% of businesses claim to recycle at least one material. Glass

and card are the most commonly recycled materials. By contrast, only 26% of businesses recycle plastics and

just 21% recycle metals. Food waste recycling is rare while recycling of cooking oil is widespread. Many

businesses would like to recycle, or recycle more, but cited a lack of recycling services and space as the main

barriers. This study does not focus on the waste already going for recycling but looks at the opportunities for

increased recycling presented by the waste that still goes for disposal.

Opportunities for waste prevention

Waste prevention involves not producing waste in the first place. This research has identified that the hospitality

sector has a major opportunity to reduce the amount of food waste it produces. Two-thirds of the food that was

thrown away could have been eaten if it had been better portioned, managed, stored and/or prepared, with the

remaining one-third consisting of items that areunavoidable waste as they are not usually consumed (e.g.

banana skins, vegetable peelings). This study estimates that the UK hospitality sector (profit only) threw away

400,000 tonnes of avoidable food waste in 2009.

The costs associated with avoidable food waste are estimated to be in the order of 722 million2which includes

food costs, haulage and disposal to landfill. Although the prevention of food waste offers the sector a significant

opportunity to reduce waste and cut costs, doing so in practice may be challenging because of the need to

ensure that customers feel they are getting value for money. WRAP will continue its work with the sector to look

at ways in which food and packaging waste can be reduced without damaging customer perceptions.

There are also opportunities to reduce packaging waste, but this is generally not within the control of any one

hospitality business but needs to be tackled across the industry as a whole, through the whole supply chain.

2 The costs figures used to estimate potential savings are taken from work conducted in 2007 and 2009. These factors arelikely to be updated as new evidence emerges.


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Opportunities for waste recycling and recovery

The hospitality sector has made good progress in recycling, with the sector overall recycling 47% of the waste

produced in 2009, our analysis suggests that over 70% of the waste that went to landfill could have been

recycled using existing markets. This increases to 80% if emerging markets for materials that are currently

difficult to recycle (e.g. mixed plastics, liquid cartons) are included. Although this study did not investigate the

composition of recycled waste, the questionnaire survey found that glass and card were widely recycled and thatpaper, plastics and metals were recycled to some extent (see Figure 12, page 56).

Food waste presents a particular opportunity. Because not all food waste can be avoided, improvements could

focus on diverting waste away from landfill into less environmentally damaging treatment processes. Currently,

200,000 tonnes of food waste is unavoidable and disposed of without any original packaging. This waste could

be captured in a separate recycling collection and sent for anaerobic digestion (AD) where energy can be

recovered from it.

If the recyclable waste generated by the hospitality industry was diverted to recycling it is estimated that savings

of 0.95 million tonnes of CO2equivalent emissions could be made.

This research estimates that UK hospitality businesses pay around 1.02 billion a year to buy all the food that iswasted. If all this waste was diverted from landfillwhere most currently goesto AD, businesses could

potentially save 6.6 million a year because AD is typically a cheaper option than landfill ( currently around 11

cheaper per tonne; the potential savings from diverting unavoidable food waste are in the region of 2 million a

year). As AD facilities and associated collections of food waste from businesses become more widespread in the

UK, more and more hospitality businesses should be able to take advantage of these economic savings. If

avoidable food waste was prevented and unavoidable food waste diverted to AD, the potential savings to the

hospitality industry are in the region of 724 million a year.

Methodological lessons

The research has demonstrated that a compositional analysis of business waste is possible, albeit challenging

and relatively expensive. The methodological lessons described below should prove valuable for future studies ofthe composition of business waste.

We attempted to reduce the costs of the research by making use of information held by companies rather

than surveying and sampling waste. However, despite contacting many large chains, few of these responded

to requests and, in the event, none of the corporate records received could be used owing to the different

methods of recording waste data. A significant investment of time and effort is required to work with large

corporations to obtain and standardise waste data in order to make it useful. By contrast, Defras large-scale

study of industry and commerce in England found that many head offices of large corporations could provide

useful information; 28% of the data points in the hotels and catering sector in Defras survey came from

corporate records. The explanation for this could lie in differences in the type of information being requested,

and the timescales within which it had to be provided.

The research substantiated our expectations that engaging businesses to participate in waste audits would bedifficult. Overall, 18% of businesses who completed the telephone survey agreed to a site audit and to have

their waste taken away for analysis. Participation could be improved in future studies by being more explicit

about the process for the site audit and compositional analysis; at the time recruitment was carried out for

this research, the methods had not been finalised and this uncertainty may have deterred some businesses.

Ensuring that waste audits were scheduled to maximise the quantity and types of waste collected also proved

difficult. This might be addressed by contacting waste contractors directly when scheduling the audit rather

than relying on information provided by the business. A longitudinal study to calibrate variations in waste

generation over time would also be useful but would be expensive.


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The logistics of collecting and sorting waste proved challenging. Sorting waste on businessespremises was

ruled out at an early stage due to concerns about customer perceptions, health and safety and lack of space.

Sites where waste could be sorted were difficult to find and, as a result, travel times between business

premises and sorting sites were longer than anticipated. Future studies should build in plenty of time to

secure suitable sorting sites close to the areas where waste is likely to be collected.

Applying the well-developed waste composition analysis methods used for household waste to business wastewas relatively unproblematic.

Established volume-to-weight conversion factors were found to overestimate the density of waste as

measured at the point of collection. This work has generated new estimates for the density of waste

materials found in small containers (i.e. 1.1m3and under) and has supported the notion that the density of a

given material will vary according to the container used to hold the waste.

The timescale for this research was very limited for funding-related reasons. Future studies should allocate

several months simply to plan the work and secure suitable sorting sites.

An important note

The exploratory nature and intrinsic complexity of this research resulted in relatively small sample sizes. The

information in this report should therefore be regarded as indicativeof the quantities of waste produced by

elements of the hospitality sector. Although levels of confidence are expressed for the compositional results in

Annex B, further work is needed to generate confidence intervals around the tonnage data; this will be part of a

future project.


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Contents1.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 9

1.1

Background ............................................................................................................................ 9

1.1.1

The hospitality sector ............................................................................................... 91.1.2 The waste and resources agenda .............................................................................. 9

1.2 Aims and objectives .............................................................................................................. 10

1.3 What is classified as a hospitality business in this research?.................................................... 11

1.4 Report structure ................................................................................................................... 12

2.0 Methodology .............................................................................................................................. 13

2.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................ 13

2.2 Literature review ................................................................................................................... 13

2.3 Corporate survey .................................................................................................................. 15

2.4 Telephone survey ................................................................................................................. 15

2.4.1 Drawing up the sampling framework ....................................................................... 15

2.4.2

Telephone survey sample sizes ............................................................................... 17

2.4.3

Development of the telephone questionnaire ........................................................... 18

2.4.4 Telephone survey bias ........................................................................................... 19

2.4.5 Telephone survey completion rates ......................................................................... 19

2.5 Waste audit methodology ...................................................................................................... 21

2.5.1 Waste audit sampling framework ............................................................................ 21

2.5.2 Securing sufficient samples and potential bias .......................................................... 22

2.5.3 The on-site waste audit process .............................................................................. 23

2.5.4 Off-site sorting and analysis of waste ...................................................................... 26

2.5.5 Final sampling for waste audits ............................................................................... 28

2.6 Calculating the composition of mixed waste ............................................................................ 29

2.6.1 Estimating the total quantity of mixed waste each year ............................................. 30

2.6.2 Calculating the overall composition of mixed waste for each subsector ....................... 31

2.7

Generating UK estimates of mixed waste quantity and composition ........................................... 31

2.7.1 The total amount of mixed wastethe choice of the Defra dataset ........................... 32

2.7.2 The total number of hospitality businessesthe ONS data........................................ 34

2.7.3 Assessing the suitability and compatibility of the different datasets ............................ 35

2.7.4 The average amount of mixed waste per company ................................................... 35

2.7.5 Gross up methodology for UK waste estimates of total waste .................................... 37

2.7.6 Gross up methodology for UK waste estimates of total mixed waste

and its composition ................................................................................................ 37

2.8 Calculating carbon benefits of preventing, recycling and recovering waste ................................. 38

2.8.1 Carbon savings from food waste recovery ................................................................ 38

2.8.2 Carbon savings from food waste prevention ............................................................. 38

2.8.3 Carbon savings from preventing and recycling key waste streams .............................. 39

2.9

Calculating cost savings from preventing and recovering food waste ......................................... 392.9.1

Potential cost savings from reduced food purchasing ................................................ 39

2.9.2

Potential cost savings from reduced food waste disposal ........................................... 40

2.9.3 Total potential cost savings from preventing food waste ........................................... 40

2.9.4 Total potential cost savings from diverting waste away from landfill to AD .................. 40

2.10 The remainder of the report ................................................................................................... 41

3.0 The waste disposed of by the UK hospitality industry ............................................................. 42

3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 42

3.2 Recap on methods ................................................................................................................ 42

3.3 Recap on sources of error ...................................................................................................... 42

3.4 Summary waste estimates for the UK hospitality profit sector ................................................... 43

3.5 The composition of mixed (residual) waste produced by the UK hospitality industry .................... 44

3.6

The opportunities for increased recycling of mixed waste ......................................................... 50

3.7

Opportunities for carbon savings ............................................................................................ 51


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3.8 Opportunities for financial savings .......................................................................................... 52

3.9 Business waste benchmarks................................................................................................. 52

4.0 Waste management practices of the hospitality sector ........................................................... 53

4.1 Waste collection .................................................................................................................... 53

4.2 How mixed waste is kept on-site ............................................................................................ 53

4.3

On-site waste treatment technologies ..................................................................................... 54

4.4 Extent of recycling ................................................................................................................ 55

4.5 Materials recycled ................................................................................................................. 55

4.6 Recycling services used ......................................................................................................... 56

4.7 Barriers to recycling amongst non-recyclers ............................................................................. 57

4.8 Waste minimisation policies ................................................................................................... 58

5.0 Implications of the study for future research into industrial and commercial waste ............. 59

5.1 Is a composition-led approach practicable? ............................................................................. 59

5.1.1

Location of the sampled businesses......................................................................... 59

5.1.2

Encouraging businesses to participate ..................................................................... 59

5.1.3 Getting the timing right .......................................................................................... 60

5.2

Is a composition-led approach affordable? .............................................................................. 605.2.1 The need for expertise ........................................................................................... 60

5.2.2 The size of the sample needed for the telephone survey ........................................... 61

5.2.3 The logistics of collecting and sorting waste ............................................................. 61

5.3 Is self-reported information on quantities of waste from telephone surveys an adequate

proxy for an on-site audit? ..................................................................................................... 61

5.4 Is useful data available from large corporate companies? ......................................................... 62

5.5 How reliable are existing bulk density factors? ......................................................................... 62

5.6

How reliable is the approach to scaling up the results? ............................................................. 63

6.0 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................ 65

6.1 Significant quantities of waste are produced by pubs, hotels, QSRs and restaurantsthere is

considerable scope for waste prevention and increased recycling and recovery ........................... 65

6.2

Most waste goes for disposalthere is considerable scope for increased recycling ..................... 65

6.3 On-site waste management is still very traditionalthere is considerable scope for the

introduction of new services ................................................................................................... 66

6.4 The overall approach taken by this study has proved to be effective .......................................... 66

6.5 The telephone survey provided useful information but is not on its own an adequate

technique for quantifying the composition of waste .................................................................. 67

6.6 The logistics of collecting waste from the sites proved challenging ............................................ 67

6.7 Opportunities for hospitality businesses .................................................................................. 68

Appendix AThe composition of mixed waste in the UK nations ................................................................... 69

Appendix BThe composition of mixed waste from waste audits .................................................................. 74

Appendix CExample of waste audit map................................................................................................... 80

Appendix DCorporate waste survey ......................................................................................................... 81

Appendix EBulk density data ................................................................................................................... 85

Appendix FTelephone survey questionnaire .............................................................................................. 87

Appendix GRecycling market assumptions ................................................................................................ 95

Appendix HAverage estimated meal weight .............................................................................................. 96

Appendix ILiterature review and bibliography ........................................................................................... 97

Appendix JPeer review by SRI Research and WRAPs comments on the points made................................. 119


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1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background

1.1.1 The hospitality sector

Latest figures indicate that the hospitality sector employs around 2.4 million people across the UK.3The sector

comprises a diverse range of business activities including hotels, pubs, restaurants, catering services, holiday

parks and caravan/camping sites. Major five-star hotels and corporate catering and facilities management

companies are included alongside modest bed and breakfast establishments and seasonal cafs.4Statistics on

the size and composition of the sector are available from a number of sources; a report prepared by Horizons for

Success gives the following figures in its latest research in terms of number of outlets. 5

Table 2 Profile of the hospitality sector in the UK in 2010

Subsector ParameterNumber of

outlets% of sector

% of sectoreligible for

inclusion in this

research

Profit

Hotels 45,840 17.7 17.7

Restaurants 27,738 10.7 10.7

Quick Service 31,368 12.1 12.1

Pubs 45,863 17.7 17.7

Leisure 19,551 7.5 Not included

Cost

Staff catering 19,259 7.4 Not included

Healthcare 31,928 12.3 Not included

Education 34,428 13.3 Not included

Services 3,078 1.2 Not included

Total 259,053 100.0 58.2

The sector is characterised by:

a large number of very small businesses (around 22% of the businesses are run by the proprietor and have

no employees, and 99% are classified as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs);

an operating model that dictates a large number of relatively small premises, even within large commercial

groups;

businesses that are operated as a lifestyle option (e.g. as a way of financing retirement to the coast) rather

than a profit-driven business;6and

a very young workforce with high levels of staff turnover.7

1.1.2 The waste and resources agenda

Food and packaging waste continues to be a priority area for the European Union (EU), the UK and the devolved

governments. The hospitality sector is likely to be a significant producer of this type of waste. However, there is

very little information available at a UK level on the amounts of different types of waste generated and the

3 Oxford Economics (2010) Economic contribution of UK hospitality industrywww.baha-uk.org/OxfordEconomics.pdf

4 British Hospitality Association 20085 Horizons (2011) UK Foodservice Industry in 2010 (updated March 2011)

http://www.horizonsforsuccess.com/files/UK%20Foodservice%20Industry%202010.pdf 6 Morrison, A., Andrew, R., Baum, T. (2001) The lifestyle economics of small tourism businesses Journal of Travel & Tourism

Research1 no. 1-2.7 People 1st(2006) The workforce hokey cokey who's in, and who's out?

http://www.people1st.co.uk/default.asp?sID=1139851177627&nStart=10
http://www.baha-uk.org/OxfordEconomics.pdfhttp://www.baha-uk.org/OxfordEconomics.pdfhttp://www.horizonsforsuccess.com/files/UK%20Foodservice%20Industry%202010.pdfhttp://www.horizonsforsuccess.com/files/UK%20Foodservice%20Industry%202010.pdfhttp://www.horizonsforsuccess.com/files/UK%20Foodservice%20Industry%202010.pdfhttp://www.baha-uk.org/OxfordEconomics.pdf


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opportunities for further recovery and recycling. Although relatively recent studies have been carried out in each

of the four UK nations on waste generation overall, detailed information is lacking on the compositionof the

mixed waste streams that go for disposal, streams that are significant for most sectors of the economy including

the hospitality sector. This presents a significant knowledge gap to both WRAP and its stakeholders which this

research has sought to address.

UK governments have come under increasing pressure to improve their knowledge of the industrial andcommercial waste stream.8As well as aiming to generate new information on the waste generated by the

hospitality sector, one of the key objectives of this project was therefore to develop a workable method for

gathering more detailed information on mixed waste composition in businesses more generally. Although

analysing the composition of mixed waste is common practice for the household waste stream, no studies that

we are aware of have attempted to do so systematically across a whole sector of the economy. We

acknowledged from the outset that this would be a costly and difficult projectlogistically, statistically and

operationally. It was expected that the lessons learnt from the project would feed into the commissioning

process for future industrial and commercial waste surveys.

Although systematic UK-level data on the quantity and composition of hospitality waste is lacking, a number ofindividual studies have previously been conducted into the waste production characteristics of the sector. Thesehave found that:

the sector produces a relatively large quantity of waste that is broadly similar to domestic waste;9

waste from the sector is relatively heavy and heavier than comparable waste from other service sector

sites;10

the sector produces a considerable quantity of glass waste and a high percentage of this is not recycled;11

the sector produces a large quantity of food waste, much of which is not recycled/composted;12

recycling rates within the sector are relatively low, with a high percentage of businesses utilising facilities that

are supposed to be restricted to households;11and

there is considerable awareness within the sector that good environmental practices reduce operating costs.

A survey by NetRegs13indicated that 72% of hotel and restaurant SMEs considered this to be the case. Many

corporate businesses within the sector also make specific commitments to waste reduction.14There are,

however, a number of barriers to effective engagement in waste minimisation or waste recycling especially

for the proprietor-run businesses and SMEs. These barriers include limited staff resources, lack of access tocommercial recycling services and lack of storage space.15,16,17

1.2 Aims and objectives

The aim of the research was to produce reliable estimates of the amounts and types of waste generated by the

UK hospitality sector through the development of a method that would enable the composition of mixed waste to

be quantified. Specific project objectives were to:

8 The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Seventh Report on Waste Reduction (2008) recommended that

the Government arrange for comprehensive surveys to collect data on the various waste streams in the UK thus enablingthe formation of an overall strategic direction and policies.9 Todd, M. and Hawkins, R. (2001) Waste counts: a handbook for accommodation operatorsCESHI, Oxford Brookes

University: Oxford10 Thomas, C., Dacombe, P., Maycox, A., Banks, C., Khan, T., and Slater, R. (2007) Identification of key resource streams in

commercial and industrial waste from small businesses in the food sectorThe Open University: Milton Keynes (IntegratedWaste Systems Research Group)

11 Hawkins, R., Carlton Smith, J. and Todd, M. (2004a)Recycling urban glass. WRAP: BanburyHawkins, R., Carlton Smith, J. and Todd, M. (2004b)Glass goes greenWRAP: Banbury

12 Oakdene Hollins (2008) Hospitality sector glass collectionWRAP: Banbury13 NetRegs (2007) SME environment 2007 UK summary www.environment-agency.gov.uk14E.g. The Hiltonscommitment www.hiltonworldwide.com/aboutus/sustainability.htm15 WRAP (2007)Glass collected from licensed premises: determination of how much glass is collected for recycling from

licensed premisesWRAP: Banbury16

Oakdene Hollins (2008) Hospitality sector glass collection WRAP: Banbury17 Bohdanowicz, P. and Martinac, I. (2003)Attitudes towards sustainability in chain hotels results of a European survey

www.irbnet.de/daten/iconda/CIB5834.pdf


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estimate the amount of different types of waste being produced by the sector, with particular emphasis on

the composition of the waste currently sent for disposal;

draw conclusions about the reasons for the waste being produced, the extent to which it is avoidable or, if it

is unavoidable, the extent to which it could be managed in a more resource-efficient manner; and

draw conclusions about how successful the research method was, how it might be improved and how it could

be applied to other industrial and commercial sectors.

During the initial project inception and scoping meetings, the scope of the project was refined to:

focus on the four main subsectors that comprise theprofitelement of the hospitality sector, i.e. hotels,

pubs, restaurants and quick service restaurants (QSRs) (58% of hospitality outlets asTable 2 above shows);

focus on mixed waste going for disposal rather than waste that is already collected for recycling;

assess the extent to which waste that is avoidable could be managed in a more resource-efficient manner;

and

contribute to the development of an evidence base for resource efficiency decision-making in the hospitality

sector.

Throughout the project, there was a tension between its exploratory aspects and the need to produce robust

estimates in a cost-effective manner.

1.3 What is classified as a hospitality business in this research?

The hospitality sector is generally considered to consist of two discrete elements:

theprofit sector:businesses where providing catering and/or accommodation services is the primary

purpose of the business and where the aim is to maximise profit (e.g. hotels, guesthouses, bed & breakfast

establishments, youth hostels, restaurants, QSRs and pubs); and

thecost sector: businesses where providing hospitality services is not the main function of the organisation

and where the aim is not to maximise profit (e.g. catering and accommodation services within the premises

of schools, hospitals, prisons, military facilities etc.).

It was agreed during the early stages of the project that it would be beneficial to focus the study on the profit

sector. This was because:

profit-sector hospitality businesses are legally responsible for their own disposal arrangements, whereas

businesses in the cost sector often dispose of their waste alongside that generated by the organisation they

are operating within, making identification and analysis of hospitality-specific waste a more complex piece of

research; and

profit-sector hospitality businesses are likely to have greater control over the range of products they buy,

which means any recommendations relating to smarter purchasing would be more straightforward for the

profit sector to implement.

Following an initial literature review, the scope of businesses included in the study was further refined to include

only those that pay for their waste to be collected and to exclude those that use household waste collection

systems. Evidence from other studies has suggested that a significant proportion of hospitality businesses use

household waste collection systems for some of their waste, especially for recycling. Rural businesses are also

more likely to make use of household collection systems.18These businesses were excluded because they were

likely to be very small businesses and including them in the research would not be consistent with ensuring value

for money. This resulted in 4% of the 150,809 businesses included in table 2 as being in scope being

subsequently removed from scope; this is show inFigure 1 below.

18 Hawkins, R., Carlton Smith, J. and Todd, M. (2004a) Recycling urban glassWRAP: Banbury

Hawkins, R., Carlton Smith, J. and Todd, M. (2004b) Glass goes green WRAP: BanburyBREW Centre for Local Authorities (2008)Highlights of local authority trade waste and recycling reports 2007/08BREWCentre: Oxford www.environmentcentre.com/documents/LAtradewastereportssummary07-08.pdf


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Businesses for which self-catering was the primary form of hospitality service (e.g. caravan/camping sites, self-

catering cottages) were also excluded from this study. This was because policy approaches for this type of

business would be very different than for others in the sector, focusing much more on influencing the behaviour

of the guests than on anything directly within the control of the business.

The scope of the study and the results presented in this report are, therefore, based on a subset of the four

main subsectors in the profit sector of the hospitality industry (i.e. hotels, restaurants, pubs and QSRs),excluding the leisure sector and those establishments that do not pay for their waste to be removed. This is

shown in figure 1 below.

Figure 1 Proportion of the hospitality industry establishments covered by the research

1.4 Report structure

Chapter 2 focuses on the studys methodology. It describes how a review of existing literature and a corporate

business survey were used to refine the scope and methodology of the project. The chapter then sets out the

methods employed to gather waste composition data and to derive UK estimates of the quantity and composition

of mixed waste.

Chapter 3 presents results, with estimates of the quantity and composition of mixed waste, opportunities for

increased recycling and business waste benchmarks.

Chapter 4 summarises the findings from the telephone survey, focusing on self-reported waste managementpractices of surveyed businesses.

Chapter 5 considers some key methodological questions related to this research and sets out exactly what this

project has learned.

Chapter 6 draws together the key findings of this project and discusses the key issues and opportunities

highlighted by its findings.

There are a number of appendices which provide a greater level of detail on the methodology employed (e.g. the

literature review, the corporate waste survey, the waste audit sampling framework and the questionnaire used

during the telephone survey). The appendices also provide data from the compositional analysis of mixed waste

undertaken at the time of the waste audits and estimates for the composition of mixed waste in the UKsconstituent nations.


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2.0 Methodology

2.1 Overview

This section of the report details the methodology used in the project, which comprised eight stages undertaken

during 2009 and 2010.

1) Aliterature review to assess the available information on waste production, waste composition and waste

management practices within the hospitality sector. This identified a number of gaps that could be

addressed by this project and so was used to refine the projects scope and the methodology used for data

gathering. See Section2.2.

2) Sampling of businesses for a telephone survey, involving quantifying the range of hospitality

businesses within the UK, subdividing these businesses into meaningful categories for sampling purposes

and developing a statistically valid sampling framework. See Section2.4.

3) Atelephone survey, involving approaching businesses across the UK that matched the sampling criteria

and asking them to participate in a survey about their waste, plus recruitment of those surveyed for a

subsequent audit of their waste. Telephone surveys were also used to gather data on attitudes to wastemanagement and recycling, as well as on current waste management practices and the types of materials

recycled. See Section2.4.

4) Sampling of businesses for the waste audits, involving pragmatic compromises between maximising

the sample size and the financial and logistical constraints of the project. See Section2.5.1-2 and Section

2.5.5.

5) On-sitewaste audits, including an interview with the site manager, a visual inspection of the waste and

containers, and the collection of presented waste. See Section2.5.3.

6) Waste composition analysis, including sorting of waste into 37 material categories, with emphasis

placed on the composition of mixed waste. See Section2.5.4 and Section 2.6.

7) Production of UK and national waste estimates, involving the different sets of data being reviewed

and combined and then estimates being generated for the quantity and composition of mixed waste in the

UK hospitality sector. See Section2.7.

In addition acorporate businesssurvey was carried out to capture data from centrally run businesses with a

large number of premises/outlets (e.g. restaurant and pub chains); this is referred to in the remainder of the

report as corporate data. The purpose of the survey was to gather data from head offices rather than approach

many individual premises which were in any case unlikely to hold the data because arrangements were made by

head office on their behalf. However, this did not obtain any useful information; see Section2.3.

The remainder of this chapter sets out in more detail the methods associated with each of these stages.

2.2 Literature review

The first stage of the project was a literature review to identify gaps and limitations in current knowledge that

could be addressed by this research. The literature review also helped to inform the methodologies used at later

stages of the project. The review included 136 items found in the public domain. Of these, only a handful of

studies provided detailed information on the composition of waste from the hospitality sector collated from

samples of 10 businesses or more.

The key themes arising from the literature research were as follows:

most of the literature concentrates on providing advice for hospitality businesses that are usually focused on

complying with regulations and/or minimising waste disposal costs;


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many of the surveys that have been undertaken:

o have only achieved acceptable response rates using telephone calls or personal visits to persuade

staff to complete questionnaires;19

o do not provide reliable data about quantities of waste or its cost to the business, most relying on

estimating waste by asking businesses to assess the number of bins and how full they are:

Oakdene Hollins20suggests such estimates may overstate the volume of waste generated as a

result of errors associated with converting reported volumes into weights; and WRAP21suggests that estimates of the weight of glass available for recycling from licensed

premises are likely to be overstated because respondents to self-completion surveys tend to

overestimate the amount of glass they produce;

o focus on the activities of the profit sector partly because of the difficulties of analysing waste from

the cost sector where the catering organisation has little control over the final waste disposal options

see Huhtamaki 200722; and

o do not provide detailed attitudinal data about wastes;

much of what has been written focuses on:

o glass specifically;

o food waste and the impact of specific technologies;23

o the licensed retail trade or hotels, with almost no data available for catering outlets;21

o the economics of changing waste collection procedures, with a focus on waste collectionorganisations rather than hospitality businesses; and

o businesses that have direct influence over their own waste management rather than those for whom

waste is managed by a third party;24

there is very limited information available on:

o difficult-to-manage wastes (especially hazardous wastes) from the sector, with the exception of fats,

oils and greases;

o wastes that are recycled or disposed of in ways other than a regularly collected bin, e.g. packaging

returned to manufacturers or waste disposed of via a macerator;

o relevant decision-making points in businesses, e.g. many head office businesses have waste

recycling as a key priority, but few are able to actively enforce this throughout all units. There is

very little data that identifies why some units under the management of the same head office

implement waste management programmes and others do not; and

o different approaches to waste within the sector mapped onto different types of recycling service

provision and different levels of fee-charging;

most of the compositional data available for the sector:

o is developed from very small sample sizes;25 26

o has been gathered using varying audit methodologies, e.g. auditing all waste or a sample of

waste;27 28

o has rarely been correlated against key business performance criteria (e.g. occupancy for hotels,

number of meals served for restaurants etc.), with the exception of the reports generated for

benchmarking purposes by hospitality businesses; and

most of the data presented across the sector as a whole:

o is based on very small samples, sometimes grossed up to represent the sector, using different

methodologies;

19 CESHI (2007) Glass collection from licensed retail sectorWRAP: Banbury20 Oakdene Hollins (2008) Mapping waste in the food industryDefra and the Food and Drink Federation: London21 WRAP (2007)Glass collected from licensed premises: determination of how much glass is collected for recycling from

licensed premisesWRAP: Banbury22 Unpublished research undertaken by CESHI23 Environmental Protection Division (2005) Wales public sector sustainable waste management guidance manual

www.wales.gov.uk [Accessed 24/01/09]24 Envirowise case studieswww.rocksiderecycling.co.uk/case_studies.asp

http://online.businesslink.gov.uk/Horizontal_Services_files/Envirowise_Strattons_case_study.pdf25 CESHI (2004) Whats worth 9m and gets chucked in a large hole in the ground? CFES, Oxford Brookes University: Oxford26 Caterer & Hotelkeeper (2007) Green Month special edition3 October 2007 Surrey, RBI Publishing.27

Environment Agency (2000) Commercial and industrial waste production survey 1998/9(unpublished)28 SLR Consulting (2007)Determination of the biodegradability of mixed industrial and commercial waste landfilled in Wales

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Research/biodegwals_1913611.pdf
http://www.rocksiderecycling.co.uk/case_studies.asphttp://www.rocksiderecycling.co.uk/case_studies.asphttp://www.rocksiderecycling.co.uk/case_studies.asphttp://online.businesslink.gov.uk/Horizontal_Services_files/Envirowise_Strattons_case_study.pdfhttp://online.businesslink.gov.uk/Horizontal_Services_files/Envirowise_Strattons_case_study.pdfhttp://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Research/biodegwals_1913611.pdfhttp://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Research/biodegwals_1913611.pdfhttp://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Research/biodegwals_1913611.pdfhttp://online.businesslink.gov.uk/Horizontal_Services_files/Envirowise_Strattons_case_study.pdfhttp://www.rocksiderecycling.co.uk/case_studies.asp


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o uses methodologies that gross up making no allowance for seasonal fluctuations/volume of trade;

and

o is not representative of the range of different models of working that are implemented across the

sector (e.g. tenanted, managed, facilities management contract etc.).

These findings suggested that it was beneficial to collect data via both a telephone survey and site waste audits.

A telephone survey would ask businesses to report on their own waste production, management and policy,whilst the site waste audits would actively quantify waste production and composition at individual business

premises.

Appendix I contains more information about the literature review.

2.3 Corporate survey

A small number of corporate brands dominate the hospitality sector. In many of these organisations, the head

office makes arrangements for waste collection on behalf of individual sites. The aim of this part of the project

was to capture waste management data from head offices, rather than approaching individual premises.

During project inception, it was hoped that corporate businesses (i.e. those with over 100 outlets) would providea mass of useful data that could be incorporated into the project. However, the different methods of recording

and storing data meant that the outputs from this part of the work could not be directly compared to the

datasets generated from other parts of the project.

The methodological lesson learnt from the corporate survey was that gathering data from large corporate

businesses is not a quick route to obtaining a large amount of analysable data. It would appear that a number of

corporate businesses do not collect waste data at all. When data is collected, a significant amount of time is

needed to work with the corporate sector not only to obtain data but also to standardise the data before any

analysis can be conducted. A fuller description of the corporate surveys methodology and findings is presented

in Appendix D.

2.4 Telephone surveyThe telephone survey stage of the project consisted of four principal activities:

drawing up the sampling framework, i.e. deciding which criteria are important when selecting businesses to

sample;

deciding how many businesses to include in the sample for the survey;

selecting the individual businesses to be included; and

carrying out the survey to obtain a representative sample of businesses.

2.4.1 Drawing up the sampling framework

The sampling framework sets the parameters within which decisions are made on individual companies to

survey. The nature of the sampling framework is normally dictated by the kind of information that is to be

produced. In this case, one of the key sampling criteria was dictated in advanceat least some samples had to

be in each of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland because (a) information was required by nation and

(b) all four nations had funded the work. In early project meetings, it was also agreed that information would be

required for each of the four subsectorshotels, restaurants, pubs and QSRsso this became a parameter

within the sampling framework too.

A key requirement was therefore up-to-date population counts for hotels, restaurants, pubs and QSRs across

England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The hospitality industry has a number of specialist data

providers and each of the datasets available has subtle differences. The database selected for the telephone

survey and waste audit parts of the project was Caterlyst (www.caterlyst.co.uk), for the following reasons:


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it is the only industry-specific database that has been developed to cover the total population of all hospitality

service providers. The other industry databases that are available have been created to drive the circulations

of specific trade magazines and are therefore skewed by subsector and size;

it is used as a sales database by a number of leading food and equipment suppliers to the industry and the

header records are therefore being checked, validated and updated on a regular basis;

it contains approximately 325,000 records and could provide information on the four subsectors selected for

inclusion within this project; the header records contain company name, address, telephone number and subsector data. In certain

subsectors it is also possible to append additional data to the record. i.e. number of bedrooms for a hotel.

and this data can help to inform data analysis; and

the subsectors can be related back to Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes if required, so that data

can be sense-checked against other national surveys.

A general count of businesses within the four subsectors was obtained from Caterlyst on 20 January 2009 to

specify the actual size of the total population. This was then refined on 5 February 2009 to ascertain the

numbers of outlets within each subsector and to exclude head offices, duplicate records, businesses that fell

outside of the sampling framework, and regional offices of groups. This resulted in 138,773 individual sites from

across the UK being included in the scope of the work.

One further parameter for the sampling framework was dictated by the logistics of the subsequent waste

auditing exercisea reasonable proportion of the selected businesses had to be within a 50-mile radius of the

sites where the waste was to be sorted (Belfast, Glasgow, London, Cardiff, Wrexham, Ormskirk and Barnsley).

This was in order to maximise the number of businesses that could be included within the fixed cost of the work.

One possible source of error was that these locations missed some of the very seasonal parts of the UK, e.g. the

Devon and Cornwall coast, so the study may have over-sampled businesses that operate all year or most of the

year.

Provision was made to supplement the sample with an additional 960 surveys, targeted to geographical areas

within which the site waste audits were to be conducted. This would ensure that the telephone survey provided a

sufficient number of businesses that could be searched to participate in the site waste audit within a reasonable

driving distance (50 miles) of the waste sorting depots.Figure 2 shows the location of the waste sorting sites

and the business recruitment areas.


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Figure 2 UK survey area showing the six waste sorting depots (Belfast, Glasgow, London, Cardiff, Wrexham,Ormskirk and Barnsley) and business recruitment areas (50-mile radii)

The final parameters for the telephone sampling framework were therefore:

1. nation (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland);2. subsector (hotels, restaurants, pubs, QSRs); and

3. within or outside a 50-mile radius of a sort site.

2.4.2 Telephone survey sample sizes

For the telephone survey, it was agreed that the project team would attempt to obtain completed questionnaires

from at least 1% of all hospitality businesses. A further requirement was that a 20% response rate should be

achieved by the telephone survey. The desired completion rate, therefore, required at least 5% of all hospitality

business contacts to be called to deliver the required number of completed telephone survey questionnaires

(6938 calls based on the Caterlyst contact database of 138,773).

The sample was divided:

equally across the subsectors (hotels, pubs, QSRs and restaurants);

in direct proportion to the number of businesses in each country; and

on a geographically random basis for most of the samples but with 240 of the sampled businesses

(distributed equally across each subsector) being within a 50-mile radius of potential waste sorting depots to

ensure there were enough within the catchment area of each site to be used for sorting waste samples.

Table 3 summarises the sample framework. Businesses that fitted each of the cells in the sampling framework

were then selected at random.


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Table 3 Sample framework for the telephone survey

Subsector Parameter

England

Northern

Ireland

Scotland

Wales

Grand

total

Hotels

% of all UK businesses belonging to thissubsector 77.4 1.07 14.23 7.3 100

Number of telephone calls allocated at random 1264 18 233 119 1634

Number of telephone calls allocated tobusinesses within 50 miles of sorting depots

60 60 60 60 240

Pubs

% of all UK businesses belonging to thissubsector

84.3 2.06 7.11 6.53 100



60 60 60 60 240

QSRs


84.25 2.21 8.42 5.12 100

Number of telephone calls allocated at random 1376 36 138 84 1634Number of telephone calls allocated tobusinesses within 50 miles of sorting depots

60 60 60 60 240

Restaurants


85.96 1.92 7.91 4.21 100



60 60 60 60 240

2.4.3 Development of the telephone questionnaire

The questionnaire for the telephone survey was informed by the literature review and previous benchmarking

studies within the literature, such as that undertaken by the International Hotels Environment Initiative29

(nowthe International Tourism Partnership). In developing the first draft, the questionnaire was intended to be used

only to collate the following data:

the contact details for each organisation;

the subsector of the industry the business is drawn from;

operating periods for the business;

current waste disposal policies/technologies/practices;

the size (e.g. number of rooms, meals served per day) and characteristics of the business; and

the corporate affiliations of the business: a snowball technique was proposed in which businesses that are a

part of a corporate group or management company would be contacted to request data for the whole group.

It was agreed that the questionnaire would also be used to collect data on the approximate amounts of waste

produced (residual and recycling), potential drivers/barriers that influence the amount of waste produced, and

attitudes towards waste management. An initial draft of the questionnaire was piloted to test ease of use and

response rates. Further redrafts were then piloted, which improved response and completion rates. A copy of the

final questionnaire is presented in Appendix F.

The information in the questionnaire on container numbers, types, size and collection frequency was used to

estimate the approximate scale of the businesss waste production. This exercise was principally used as an input

to the sampling framework for the waste audits and not for generating estimates of waste for reporting. To this

end, the questionnaire survey used a simple container classification of:

29 International Hotels Environmental Initiative (1993) Environmental management for hotels: the industry guide to goodpractice Butterworth-Heinemann: Oxford


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two-wheeled bins;

four-wheeled bins;

sacks;

skips with compaction;

skips without compaction; and

other.

Assumptions about the typical size of each container were then applied to derive an estimate of waste

generation. In reality, of course, there are a range of different container capacities even within the same

container type. However, the sites audits confirmed that the majority of containers on-site were the typical size

(80l for a sack, 240l for a two-wheeled bin and 1100 litres for a four-wheeled bin), although skips varied more

widely. This suggests that the approach taken in this study was correctthat telephone surveys alone would

result in lower confidence in estimates, but that these generic descriptions (which are easy for businesses to

recognise) are generally standard enough to be used as a proxy for waste generation.

2.4.4 Telephone survey bias

As with all surveys, the results will only be representative of the whole sector if non-response bias is low or

preferably non-existent. Non-response bias is introduced if the respondents are different in some way to the non-respondents, e.g. if they recycle more or if they produce more waste. For the purposes of this research, we have

assumed that non-response bias is insignificant, but in reality we have no evidence to either support this or

refute it. It is likely that if there is any non-response bias, it is due to under-sampling larger waste producers

because the questionnaire is longer for businesses which produce more waste, leading to higher levels of non-

completion in larger businesses.

As with all telephone surveys, there may also be a degree of response bias. It is quite common for survey

respondents to overstate behaviours that are seen to be good (e.g. recycling) and understate behaviours that

are seen to be bad (e.g. pouring cooking oil down the drain). In this researchwe ensured that the interviewer

minimised this risk through their introduction to the survey, and we have compensated for this in part through

the site audit process, but we accept this bias may still be present.

2.4.5 Telephone survey completion rates

A questionnaire was considered to be complete once a respondent had confirmed that they currently pay for the

removal of their general waste. A total of 1659 questionnaires were recorded as fully completed. Businesses that

do not pay for their own waste to be disposed of were excluded from the study because it was felt that they

would produce such little waste that the effort to collect it would be disproportionate; 122 businesses exited the

survey for this reason. Thus a total of 1659 businesses paid for their waste to be disposed of either directly

(1587) or via their head office (72), were taken through the survey questions and had their responses included in

the final data.


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Table 4 Call outcomes for the telephone survey of 9281 businesses

Responses

Hotels

Pubs

QSRs

Restaurants

Totals

%

Calls made 1,924 1,947 1,747 3,663 9,281 100

Completed responses (businesses paying for wastedisposal)

352 481 312 514 1,659 18

Completed responses (businesses not paying/dont knowwhether paying for waste disposal)

71 28 11 12 122 1

Refused to answer 408 316 435 694 1,853 20

No reply 376 411 501 1,415 2,703 29

Call back required 482 221 185 407 1,295 14

Number not recognised 152 312 148 376 988 11

Business has moved 16 18 21 32 87 1

Unsoundother 67 160 134 213 574 6

The completion rate for the survey was 18%, which is approximately what would be expected for a survey of this

kind. Response rates were better in the pub sector (25%) and lower in the restaurant sector (14%). This is likely

to relate partly to reclassification of businesses from restaurants to pubs during the quality assurance process. 30

The distribution of the responses across the nations of the UK is shown in Table 3. The responses achieved

largely reflected the population of businesses in each of the four subsectors and UK countries.

Statistical advice was sought from the Statistical Services Centre (SSC) at Reading University regarding the

number of completed questionnaires required per sector and country. It was considered that the achieved

responses were sufficiently close to the targets set in the sampling framework and that no further telephone

questionnaires were required.

Table 5 Coverage of survey responses by nation and subsector

Subsector England Scotland WalesNorthernIreland

Total

Hotels

Sample* 256 61 32 3 352

Population** 18,506 3,700 1,667 503 24,376

% coverage 1.6 1.6 1.9 0.6 1.4

Pubs

Sample 399 37 36 9 481

Population 35,432 3,037 2,529 1,313 42,311

% coverage 1.1 1.2 1.4 0.7 1.1

QSRs

Sample 251 30 23 8 312

Population 38,476 3,906 2,229 1,344 45,955

% coverage 0.7 0.8 1.0 0.6 0.7

Restaurants

Sample 430 47 23 14 514

Population 22,278 2,151 1,078 624 26,131

% coverage 1.9 2.2 2.1 2.2 2.0

Total

Sample 1336 175 114 34 1,659

Population 114,692 12,794 7,503 3,784 138,773

% coverage 1.2 1.4 1.5 0.9 1.2

* Completed questionnaires ** From the Caterlyst database

30 A number of pub businesses had stated that they were restaurants in response to the questionnaire survey. However,further investigation demonstrated that they were pubs with a substantial catering function, i.e. they provided a drinks-onlyservice as well as food.


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2.5 Waste audit methodology

The waste audit stage of the project consisted of the following activities:

development of a sampling framework based on the telephone survey;

the on-site audit which included an interview, visual inspection and collection of waste; and

off-site sorting and analysis of waste.

2.5.1 Waste audit sampling framework

The telephone questionnaire was used as a basis from which to select the businesses to participate in the on-site

waste audits. Rather than selecting businesses at random, a waste audit sampling framework was developed in

an attempt to align the sampled businesses as closely as possible with the structure of the UK population of

hospitality businesses.

Categories of waste production were developed for each subsector by analysing the results of the telephone

survey to calculate the estimated amounts of waste produced (low, medium or high). This was achieved by

taking the respondents answers to how many containers they have on-site, multiplying by the size of the

container and by how many times it is collected, and assuming it is always 100% full when collected. CESHIsexpert knowledge was then applied to assess what range of amounts could be described aslow, medium and

high, as shown in Table 4 below.

Table 6 Businesses falling into each category of waste production

Wasteproductioncategory

Hotels Restaurants Pubs QSRs

Likely range based onexpert knowledge(litres per week)

Low 1,100 1 ,200 960 920

Medium >1,100 and 6 ,60 0 >1,200 and 12,000 >960 and 3 ,600 >920 and 6 ,000

High >6,600 >12,000 >3,600 >6,000

Number ofobservations fromsurvey falling withineach category

Low 54 164 28 42

Medium 204 379 269 208

High 66 64 61 53

Overall 324 607 358 303

Relationships between estimates of waste production and a series of business characteristics were analysed by

the project team. Following this analysis, the variables considered to be the best indicators of waste production

were identified as:

1. number of rooms (for hotels);

2. whether part of a group (for hotels, restaurants and QSRs);

3. whether managed or not (for pubs);4. number of meals served per day (for hotels and pubs);

5. volume of business (for restaurants and QSRs);

6. whether takeaway or eat-in (for QSRs); and

7. whether the business recycles (for restaurants).

The total number of waste audits was dictated by resource constraints and based on some assumptions about

how long it would take to audit the sites, how much waste would be expected and how long it would take to

collect and sort it. At the outset of the research, approximately 90 audits were envisaged. Later, the Yorkshire

and Humber Assembly and the Welsh and Scottish governments provided additional funding that helped increase

the number of audits across the UK; approximately 40 additional sampling points were added as a result.Table 7

shows the final waste audit sampling framework.

In some cases, there are quite small samples (at an extreme, for example, only one audit was conducted for

high waste-producing pubs); in these cases we have had to assume that the sampled companies represent


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others in the same category but that assumption is obviously problematic hence we have suggested that the

data from the study is regarded only as indicative. As set out above, the final number of audits achieved was

limited by the available resources, timescales and the information gathered during the waste audits, which was

not always adequate to include in the final data. This was despite using a recruitment and scheduling process

that aimed to maximise the number of audits achieved and is a key lesson learnt from the project.

Table 7 The sampling framework for the on-site waste audits carried out across the UK during 2009(subtotals may not add up to 100% due to rounding)

Subsector Waste production factorEstimatedlevel of

waste

Numberidentified

in thesurvey

Estimatedpopulation

distribution

Number ofwaste

audits

Sample

distribution

Hotels

0-10 rooms Low 119 37% 12 34%

11-50 rooms Medium 135 42% 14 40%

>50 rooms High 65 20% 9 26%

Subtotal 319 100% 35 100%

Pubs

Not managed & 50 meals/day Low 88 46% 16 55%

Managed & 50 meals/day Low/medium 26 14% 4 14%

Not managed & >50 meals/day Medium 46 24% 8 28%

Managed & >50 meals/day High 30 16% 1 3%

Subtotal 190 100% 29 100%

QSR

Either takeaway OR not part of a group Low 184 70% 10 31%

Not takeaway AND part of a group High 78 30% 22 69%

Subtotal 262 100% 32 100%

Restaurants

Not part of a group Low 300 52% 26 62%

Belong to a group & recycle Medium 184 32% 12 29%

Belong to a group & dont recycle High 89 16% 4 9%

Subtotal 573 100% 42 100%

Total 1,344 138

2.5.2 Securing sufficient samples and potential bias

An essential part of the waste audit scheduling process was obtaining informed consent. During the initial

telephone survey, 298 respondents had confirmed they would be willing to participate in a waste audit. Of these,

60 fell within the relevant postcode areas (i.e. within a 50-mile radius of a waste sorting depot) but seven of

them had not provided sufficient data to enable the audit to take place. That meant more businesses had to be

recruited. However, it was critical to keep the sample as random as possible and not specifically target particular

types of business. To overcome this challenge, a second round of telephone interviews was carried out, targeting

all businesses that had completed the questionnaire but initially declined to participate in the audits, asking themto reconsider. This approach proved successful and further businesses were recruited. The failure of the initial

approach is believed to have been due in part to the fact that the audit methodology was still under

development, so telephone interviewers were unable to reassure companies effectively about potential disruption

and confidentiality concerns.

It is recognised that sampling businesses from the subset of telephone survey respondents that agreed to

participate in waste audits may have led to a degree of bias. For example, those with a greater interest in waste

management and/or participation in recycling may be more inclined to take part in waste audits. This is a

common methodological challenge in this type of study. This was unavoidable in order to avoid bringing the

project partners into disrepute; informed consent to have their waste removed for analysis was obtained from

every businesses.

Because the location of the businesses had to be within reasonable driving distance of the sorting sites, and thesorting sites were all in urban areas, there were initial concerns that sampling just from a city centre location


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may bias the data collected. To test whether these concerns were justified, Geographic Information System

(GIS) mapping was carried out that suggested a diverse range of urban and rural businesses could be captured.

A detailed example of such a map is provided in Appendix C. Although the intention was to select businesses

within a 50-mile radius of a waste sorting depot, in some cases there was insufficient representation of the

required business subsectors within this radius and some samples had to be taken from a wider radius. For

example, in Cardiff, samples were collected from Gloucestershire, the South Midlands and South West Wales in

addition to Cardiff itself. Therefore samples were taken from a wide geographical spread of businesses acrossthe UK from both urban and rural locations.

2.5.3 The on-site waste audit process31

The on-site audits commenced in March 2009 and consisted of three distinct elements:

a pre-arranged interview with the site manager about waste production;

a visual inspection of the waste and on-site containers; and

collection of the waste for analysis off-site.

2.5.3.1 The interview

On arrival at site the most appropriate staff member (or point of contact from the telephone survey) was

identified. The interviewer asked to be taken to the area of the site where waste was kept prior to removal. A

brief interview was then conducted to determine when each of the waste types was last collected and whether

the waste available was typical of an average week. The auditor also asked for information on the number of

meals served per day and asked for permission to remove the waste for analysis.

Even though the focus of the study was on mixed waste, information was also collected about bulky waste.

However, in every case where bulky waste was found, the interviewee stated that it was generated on an ad-hoc

basis and found it impossible to quantify the amount. Within larger establishments the bulky waste tended to be

generated as part of a refurbishment programme or as a result of the breakdown in a specific piece of

equipment, but this would not take place at regular intervals. Hotels under corporate ownership generally

undergo a major refurbishment every 7-12 years with more minor work being completed on an ad-hoc basis,with contractors managing the waste. Because in most cases there was no physical waste to sample and little

knowledge on the part of the site manager about what waste was generated at the last refurbishment, bulky

waste had to be excluded from this research.

2.5.3.2 The visual inspection

The remainder of the time on-site consisted of a visual inspection of the waste. The information was recorded in

a table provided to the waste auditor and included:

Documents

The Composition of Waste Disposed of by the UK Hospitality Industry FINAL JULY 2011 GP EDIT.54efe0c9.11675