How Vending Can Tackle The Waste Management Issue
One of the major challenges that facilities managers (FM’s) face is waste management. With more businesses looking at Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and enacting new net zero targets, tackling unnecessary waste is one of the most common first steps.
For premises that have catering, food and drink packaging is a number one waste offender across all types of facilities. The vending and automated retail industry is working to find innovative ways to reduce waste with the introduction of new government schemes. Through these new processes, waste can be reduced and the responsibility of it can be moved away from the FM, helping them to manage their premises waste management.
A common waste item is the disposable coffee cup. As a nation of coffee drinkers in the UK, there are eight million cups of coffee served everyday through automated vending machines alone. To encourage the use of reuseable cups and reduce level of waste, almost all large coffee machines are fitted with sensors. This allows consumers to use their own cups – but many don’t know this and therefore disposable cups are regularly deposited. This contributes to over seven million coffee cups ending up in UK landfill every day, despite paper cups being one of the more simple items for us to recycle, leading to mass ecological impacts.
It is important to highlight that UK infrastructure has the capacity to reprocess all the paper cups mentioned above, we just need the right policies to ensure this happens. While it is important that we become better educated on how to reduce waste ourselves, commercial industries are still the top offenders. The only way that we will see real improvement is through new regulations that ensure businesses change their operations for good.
Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme
The Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme is a new initiative set up by Defra to shift the costs of dealing with packaging waste away from the taxpayer and on to packaging producers, who will pay the full cost of managing packaging waste. Through the fees, producers will be incentivised to use less packaging and use recyclable materials to meet higher sustainability targets.
While there have been delays by the government due to fears of increased costs for the vending industry of up to 300 per cent, many representatives are pushing for the new scheme after being involved in consultations with Defra.
The EPR scheme will enable better waste management on premises and will help alleviate some of the responsibility for such work off the FM’s shoulders. Many vending operators are keen for the potential introduction of an EPR scheme in the UK despite the costs. The scheme will see more cohesive partnerships between FM’s and vending operators for managing waste and improving sustainability.
Deposit Return Scheme
Another scheme that would benefit FM and vending partnerships is the deposit return scheme (DRS). A DRS is where a customer pays a refundable deposit on the drink container, for example a plastic bottle of water, which they can claim back by returning the empty container when they are finished. Every year in the UK, consumers go through around 14 billion plastic bottles and nine billion canned drinks, many of which aren’t recycled despite the material composition allowing for it.
The scheme will see the introduction of ‘reverse vending machines’, whereby consumers can return their bottles and have their deposit refunded, as well as manual return systems at various retail outlets.
With many FM’s working towards sustainability and net zero goals, it may become a requirement in future years for premises to be compliant with a DRS system, and therefore FM’s should take note of the parameters required. The potential impact on business operations should also be considered, such as the type of drink containers offered at a site and their impact.
As the UK moves towards its carbon neutrality goals, these are schemes that can be implemented to support FM’s within the vending space to help reduce waste and improve the planet.
