Vegware wins 2nd Queens’ Award for unique zero waste support – our 60th award!
We’re delighted to announce that we’ve won our second Queen’s Award for Enterprise.
To make matters even more exciting, it’s our 60th accolade – and it’s awarded on the Queen’s 90th birthday in her 50th award year. First winning in 2013 for Sustainable Development, the latest award is in recognition of the innovative work Vegware is doing to help businesses recycle used packaging and food waste. We’re celebrating with our new film, and by launching our Green Tree collection. Our MD Joe Frankel says:
“Winning the Queen’s Award again is a huge honour. The journey has been fantastic – when we started, the only option for used takeaway packaging was to go to landfill or incineration, as most still does.
But we changed that by creating the widest range of genuinely compostable plastic-free catering disposables, and simultaneously working closely with the waste sector to ensure recycling options for clients all around the UK. With the current appetite for recycling, we are soon announcing a crowdsourcing campaign to create additional composting routes. We are proud to be a sustainability leader in foodservice.”
Thank you to all of our wonderful customers for their ongoing support – we hope you can join us in celebrating this award win.
Our film demonstrates Vegware’s innovative approach to zero waste in foodservice – to use compostable packaging, which can then be recycled with food waste. It responds to recent news that under 1 in 400 disposable cups are recycled, with 7 million sent to landfill daily, as highlighted by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s War on Waste.
We’re also marking this accolade with our new Green Tree collection, a stylish grab and go range celebrating our award-winning eco credentials with a trendy word tree motif. Like all of Vegware’s products, the collection is low carbon, completely compostable, and made from plants not plastic.
The Green Tree collection is currently being used to serve food at the University of Surrey, where it’s been a huge success. Director of Hospitality Simon Booth explains, ‘Landfill costs are only going up, and a solution that removes this factor completely really helps us from a business perspective. When we realised that over 80% of the landfill waste produced was coming from retail areas, our caterers and estates got together to address the issue. The most positive step forward was to switch to a compostable range of foodservice products. Vegware was the perfect partner.’
Vegware’s compostable solution to zero waste in foodservice is already in place in universities, hospitals and offices across the UK. With our compostable foodservice packaging and environmental expertise, Glasgow’s Commonwealth Festival 2014 achieved 81% recycling, and the University of Cambridge diverts 1.5 tonnes of used packaging from landfill every month.