Veolia's partnership with well-known fast food chain
Veolia has partnered with a well-known fast food chain since 2009 with a key focus on extracting value from waste. This has included introducing paper cup recycling across all its restaurants, and working with their suppliers to improve the recyclability of their packaging. Veolia also works closely with the restaurant’s charity as part of our wider CSR commitment, which includes volunteering and sponsorship of key events.
Safeguarding recycling streams from contamination
The fast food chain utilises several styles of front of house recycling units for customers, in addition to back of house segregation in the kitchens. In most cases recycling rates at restaurant level, not including backhauled commodities, are low, with only 4% of material being recycled through Veolia’s existing recycling service.
This is predominately linked to customer and staff engagement resulting in contamination of recycling streams, exacerbated by an inconsistent recycling unit design between all restaurants making it more challenging to establish a common approach.
With Simpler Recycling coming into force on 31st March 2025, a standardised approach across all restaurants was required, supported by a robust training programme. The fast food chain approached Veolia to support a trial to test and determine the most effective front of house recycling bin configuration and back of house training initiatives.
Veolia's analysis and sampling solution
The Veolia Account Management Team approached the Van Collection Service (VCS) team and our Southwark Integrated Waste Facility to configure a bespoke solution. Waste needed to be collected from three restaurants in North London, and brought to Southwark for analysis by the sampling team to establish any improvements against the baseline.
The solution involved a van containing 2x 660L bins per restaurant, one for general and food streams destined for Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT), and one for other recycling streams to be delivered to the Material Recovery Facility (MRF).
Waste was placed in colour coded bags and stored in cages at each restaurant ready for collection. The waste was then manually loaded into each relevant container in the van and counted as part of the analysis. This material was then taken to Southwark for full analysis and compliant disposal.
Representative samples of the material were stored in the Sampling Area at Southwark for weekly review by the customer during pre-planned site visits. A sampling report was also shared highlighting key opportunities and challenges, providing an overview of recycling performance.
How we helped the customer
This trial identified key opportunity areas for the fast food chain to recycle more, which resulted in:
- Cost savings
- Delivery in line with their environmental objectives
- Increased operational efficiency
- Achieved a 50% recycling rate - a significiant improvement over the baseline
The solution demonstrated Veolia’s ability to implement forward-thinking and flexible service, tailored to the customer's needs. We have also tested and proven the capability of our VCS solution by operating a 7 day a week service consistently throughout, as well as showcasing the value of our waste sampling service at Southwark.
Veolia helped increase recycling rates up to 50%
The Sustainability Manager from the Fast Food chain:
“The trial with Veolia was a very useful step in increasing our understanding of how to separate our waste to improve the ability to recycle it, and work towards our ambition to achieve circularity. Veolia’s advice and insight, along with the practical elements of separating and sorting the waste was invaluable”.
Ed Smythe, Strategic Account Manager at Veolia UK:
“The seamless collaboration between VCS and the Sampling Team at Southwark has generated useful and strategically critical insight into our customers' waste. We have made it easier for the restaurant chain to choose the most effective front of house recycling units and colleague training packages which they will now roll out across the UK & Ireland. Projects such as this show we can go much further than just emptying the bins; we can use our knowledge of our customer’s waste to highlight opportunities, improve processes and deliver best practice at scale."
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