AS WRAP’s Recycle Week celebrates its 20th anniversary, care home meals provider apetito has collected and recycled more than 15 million of its trays nationwide within its closed-loop recycling process known as ‘Project Boomerang’ – the first ever of its kind on an industrial scale.
This year’s Recycle Week is focused on encouraging the public to recycle more of the right things – particularly items that end up commonly missed within the home and that’s where ‘Project Boomerang’ has been able to help.
Lee Sheppard, apetito’s director of corporate affairs, policy and sustainability, said: “We really are committed to leading the way when it comes to sustainability. We launched this initiative back in 2021 to address the number of plastic trays that we delivered to our Wiltshire Farm Foods customers that ultimately were going into kerbside recycling.
“We guarantee we recycle 100 per cent of the trays we collect into new trays here in the UK; compare that to household recycling where staggeringly the latest RECOUP Household Plastic Packaging Collection Survey showed that 47 per cent of what is collected via household recycling actually gets sent abroad for processing, often with uncertain results.
“Everyone at apetito believes passionately in making a real difference, and we are proud that ‘Project Boomerang’ has done just that.”
Initially launched in 2021 for its consumer business, Wiltshire Farm Foods, the scheme was expanded into apetito’s healthcare partners earlier this year. The scheme has been widely adopted and is now operating in more than 20 sites with plans to extend it further across apetito’s NHS customers over the next year.
