Retail food trade wastewater

• Be creative with your menu. Develop dishes that use all your ingredients. Nose-to-tail and shoot-to-root cooking means less goes to waste.
• Don't throw away leftover ingredients you've already prepped. See if local charity organisations would welcome them to provide meals for people in need.
• Try pickling or fermenting leftover prepped vegetables instead of throwing them away.
• Compost your vegetable scraps.
• Support local suppliers by purchasing local, seasonal ingredients. They'll be fresh and tasty, and you'll be minimising the environmental impact of transport.
• Feature sustainable proteins on your menu. For example, use third-party verified products, or hormone-free meat from a local farmer.
• Promote the doggy bag. You'll have less waste for you to deal with and you won’t have to throw as much food away. Supply compostable, biodegradable or reusable containers, and encourage customers to bring their own.

• Never pour used cooking oil into a sink or grease trap.
• Scrape leftover food into the bin or compost, not into the sink.
• Dry-wipe plates to remove leftover oils, meat juices and sauces instead of rinsing.
• Use sink strainers to catch solid food waste when you're preparing meals.
• Wipe or sweep spills – don't hose them into drains.
• Avoid using bleach or caustic soda. Choose environmentally friendly products when you can and use as little as possible.

If used cooking oil enters our system, it can have major environmental consequences and block our pipes.

• Collect cooking oil you can't reuse in sealed containers and store it in a bunded area (an area where leaking oil can't escape) ready for your oil recycler to collect and recycle off-site.
• Have the right-sized grease trap for the volume of waste oil your business produces, and never pour waste oil directly into the grease trap.
• Find the balance between cooking great food, reusing cooking oil and saving on recycling. Deciding how often to change deep fryer oil depends on what sort of oil you use, how many hours it's in use, how often you use it, the temperature it's heated to, and how clean your equipment is.

• Offer tap water rather than bottled water to customers to reduce plastic waste.
• Use compostable, biodegradable or reusable containers for takeaway and encourage your suppliers to do the same. The food service industry uses tonnes of single-use containers in the supply chain that eventually end up in landfill.

• Check fixtures and appliances for leaks. A hot water leak wastes both water and energy.
• Understand your water and energy use. Watch for changes over time that might indicate a leak or that equipment needs maintenance.
• If you need to pre-rinse plates and cutlery, use cold water from a water-efficient smart rinse valve.
• Investigate water-saving equipment like waterless woks, and efficient dishwashers, ice makers and bottlewashers.
• When it's time to upgrade plumbing and fixtures, bigger isn't always better. Get the right-sized dishwashers and bottlewashers for the number of covers you serve, and only run them when they're full.
• Don't use maximum water temperatures when washing up. A reduction of even a few degrees will save energy and money.

• Place bins in the toilet to discourage patrons from flushing sanitary items, wet wipes and paper towels. Wet wipes alone cause about 75% of blockages.
• Display posters letting customers and staff know what’s okay to flush down the toilet – and what's not.
• Display posters reminding customers and staff to turn off taps when they've finished washing their hands.