Ginsters reaps rewards of slashing waste

Ginsters has halved its food waste and saved 250,000 food miles as a result of a three-year programme of work in partnership with environmental business support body Envirowise.

The savoury snacks supplier worked with Envirowise to cut cardboard waste by 30% by reducing bulk purchasing and eliminating excess packaging from raw material suppliers.

By switching to a certain variety of pastry, Ginsters was also able to re-use scrap pastry, slashing food waste by 50% per tonne of product, delivering a 40% cost saving over three years.

And by changing from a standard high-volume, low-pressure cleaning system to a low-volume, high-pressure method, Ginsters halved its water use for cleaning, saving 100t of water annually. Gas use was reduced by 15% by using cleaner-burn ovens. In addition, the company has saved 250,000 food miles by implementing a local sourcing policy.

“Envirowise enabled us to make contacts with people we would have otherwise not been aware of, enabling an insight into areas of resource efficiency that we would not have achieved on our own,” said the firm.