Westminster City Council and Veolia won Service Change at Local Authority Level for their borough-wide Food Waste rollout at this year’s Awards for Excellence. This award comes at the end of a year-long effort to roll out food waste recycling services to every neighbourhood in The City.
Following a small trial of the service in 2019, Veolia and Westminster City Council have expanded food waste recycling services across the city. So far over 60,000 properties have received the permanent recycling service that began rollout in February 2022 and finally concluded in April 2023. Since this service was rolled out, just one year ago, over 1,300 tonnes of food waste has been collected and the recycling rate has increased 4% in all wards where the service has already been implemented.
This initiative won Service Change at Local Authority Level at this 20th anniversary celebration of the Awards for Excellence in Recycling and Waste Management hosted at The Grosvenor in London. This is one of the three new categories created this year making the Veolia Westminster team the first to ever win this award, judged on the recognition of a successful service change with desired results and the positive reaction of local communities.
The small team has been presented with many challenges since their successful pilot trial in 2021. Changes in leadership, the highly challenging urban environment and recruitment issues are just three examples of the hurdles the teams navigated in their efforts to roll out this initiative. The team’s speedy problem resolutions would not have been possible without the strong partnership that has been built between Veolia and Westminster Council.
The Service Change at Local Authority Level award offers the unique opportunity to acknowledge all this hard work and celebrate the dedicated team that made it their mission to deliver this initiative.
Helder Branco, Veolia Westminster General Manager:
The food waste recycling initiative has been a key priority for our engagement team for the past year. Our team went above and beyond to step up to the challenge and I am proud to see the service available borough wide. I am so grateful for our close working partnership with Westminster City Council that is recognised through this award.
Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Cabinet Member for City Management at Westminster City Council, said:
About a third of all waste we throw away is food waste, so I’m really proud of the work we’ve done with Veolia to roll out food waste recycling across the whole of Westminster over the last year. The results speak for themselves; more than 1,300 tonnes of waste collected and an increase in recycling across all wards in the city. This award is a fantastic result for the team and represents all the hard work they do to make Westminster a greener place to live.