Background
Blue Sky Leisure is a family-owned company based in East Anglia, who like Biffa, pride themselves on delivering high-quality services to its customers. Biffa provides waste management services to holiday parks Kelling Heath and Woodhill Park, which each receive over 4,000 guests a year as well as Zaks American Restaurants, a staple in the Norfolk and Norwich community for over four decades.
Blue Sky Leisure is committed to protecting the environment and changing it for the better. Group Facilities Manager Neil Winter, believes their experiences "shouldn't cost the earth". Here's how Biffa are supporting Blue Sky Leisure with effective waste management by following the waste hierarchy to reduce their waste to landfill.
Waste concerns for Blue Sky Leisure and the hospitality industry
How is commercial waste disposed?
After experiencing concerns with their previous waste management company about how their waste was being disposed of, Blue Sky Leisure required a replacement operator before the new holiday season commenced. Transparency in how their waste was being handled and their environmental impact was at the forefront of Blue Sky Leisure's decision.
Holiday parks and restaurants produce large quantities of various waste from plate scrapings and produce packaging to abandoned items from vacating guests including tents and broken camping equipment. This array of materials need to be disposed of in different ways, and it's important to Blue Sky Leisure and Biffa to communicate how these items can and will be disposed of. With Biffa's innovative and award-winning facilities, a large selection of collection services and container sizes, Biffa have the infrastructure and experience to manage and process business waste effectively within the UK.
Balancing waste management costs and efficiency
We think it's essential to provide a positive balance between efficiently collecting large volumes of waste produced by the hospitality industry and ensuring that recycling and recovery opportunities are maximised. By analysing Blue Sky Leisure's waste output through a free waste audit, Biffa can assess which collections streams would be most beneficial financially and to the environment. By reducing general waste collections in favour of recycling or single stream collection can low costs and a business's carbon footprint. To accommodate fluctuating seasonal trends in waste production by providing the customer with the option to only pay for the lifts required.
Education is an ongoing necessity
Education of staff and the guests is a crucial issue that Blue Sky Leisure and the hospitality sector face. Making recycling easily accessible for and producing accurate and easy to understood information is an essential step to reducing waste going to landfill due to cross contamination.
Solutions for improving Blue Sky Leisure's waste management
Meeting their environmental requirements
Blue Sky Leisure are working towards their ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) certification, which provides a specific framework and a structured approach to the handling of their waste. Outlined steps include categorising hazardous and non-hazardous materials, producing objectives and targets for handling waste and documented procedures for identifying, monitoring and controlling waste. With access to Biffa’s infrastructure, including our EDF facilities, hazardous waste plants and MRFs, we can minimise waste to landfill to help Blue Sky Leisure achieve their certification.
Meeting their customer's expectations
Neil Winter highlights the UK's change in attitude over recent years towards the impact of rubbish on our environment and how it's encouraged the hospitality industry to take action. As Blue Sky Leisure continue to encourage their guests to recycle wherever possible, Biffa will provide the necessary infrastructure to support their efforts.
"People have changed in the domestic world as well as the commercial and they want to recycle. Ten years ago, people went on holiday and they forget everything about waste and they bin everything. It became such an issue at parks.
We are 300 acres of protected pine forest and heathland in North Norfolk, and we've got our duty to look after that land and make sure our guests are coming here for the right reasons - not only for the beautiful environment but to actually see that we're looking after their environment."
Not all waste can diverted from landfill but with support from Biffa's dynamic waste infrastructure and the expertise of Business Development Manager Emma Pamment, together Biffa and Blue Sky leisure can implement an effective waste management system to successfully follow the waste hierarchy to increase recycling across restaurant and holiday parks.
