ecosurety helps Hain Daniels to support developing countries and eliminate waste

Their brands include Gales, Robertsons, Hartley, and Sunpat, as well as a number of its own products which are distributed to convenience stores up and down the country.

 

The challenge

During manufacture, the company’s Luton site receives high volumes of large wooden crates used to transport fresh fruit from abroad. Local pallet companies were unwilling to take them away for reuse or re-sale because their size meant there was no market for them. 

Their size meant they also took up significant room at the site. A nearby recycler would instead use them to store scrap wood, and when full, these would be sent to a biomass plant to be chipped and generate electricity. However, the strength and good condition of the crates suggested a more pro-active and suitable solution was required!

The solution

ecosurety helped Hain Daniels find a local social enterprise in Northamptonshire that shipped aid equipment to a range of overseas projects including a Zimbabwean mental health institute, schools and hospitals in Sierra Leone, and refugee camps in Kurdistan. Tools, medical supplies and building materials were placed into the crates, shrink-wrapped and put into shipping containers.

The size of the pallets meant space inside the containers could be maximised; more equipment could be securely fitted into them, and the pallets could be stacked securely. Once at their destination, the crates could be used either for wood, re-used, or as building materials.

A winning formula

The crates were moved up the waste hierarchy, from recycling to re-use, effectively eliminating them from the waste stream and re-using them twice: both in the shipping process, and in the destination country. By linking Hain Daniels with a charitable organisation, the food manufacturer was also able to provide tangible resources to those in need overseas.

As a result of the work of ecosurety’s waste management team to direct their waste away from landfill, Hain Daniels was shortlisted for the national Rubble Master Zero waste awards, run by the Chartered Institute of Waste Management, in November 2014.

Phil Newbury, waste and resource manager at ecosurety says, "We always strive for the most resource efficient solution. This scheme is a great example of how material can be reused rather than sent for recycling. ecosurety is able to unlock these kinds of hidden gem solutions for charities and for producers."