On-site food composting with the food WasteMaster

The Southbank Centre is a hub of art, culture and music and is one of the top five most visited attractions in the UK with 3.1m visitors in 2022/23. In addition to hosting over 5,000 events a year, the Southbank Centre offers visitors a wide range of food and drink having an in-house caterer and 14 commercial partners. The Southbank Centre aims to reduce the emissions associated with all of its activity and found that transport emissions from food waste collections could be reduced by 80% by processing food waste on-site. The Southbank Centre invested in a WasteMaster to process food waste on site rather than transporting it off-site for processing.

Measures taken to achieve goals:

The WasteMaster is a food composter, with an advanced technology system that fires charged electrons to break down the cell walls of food, accelerating the composting process. Not only can the WasteMaster break down 1000kg of food into compost in 24 hours, it also reduces the volume of food waste by 80%, effectively lowering emissions by the same percentage. The Southbank Centre uses a percentage of the compost produced by the WasteMaster on site in their Roof Garden, Pocket Forest and the planters around the Centre, this supports the biodiversity and environmental quality. Where the compost is not used on-site, it is sent to an anaerobic digestion facility which breaks down the compost to generate green energy.

Installing the WasteMaster has helped the Southbank Centre improve its waste segregation processes. The WasteMaster cannot break down certain food items, such as large bones. Therefore, the Southbank Centre is implementing a waste strategy to minimise the contamination of the food waste that enters the machine.