apetito Expands World Leading Closed-loop Recycling System into Care Homes

As a company dedicated to doing business in a sustainable way and reaching its goal of Net Zero by 2040, leading care homes meal provider, apetito is expanding its pioneering closed-loop recycling system for meal trays into care homes across the UK.

Following highly successful results within its consumer business, Wiltshire Farm Foods, and within the NHS, the world-first “Project Boomerang” will soon be operating at select partnering homes with plans to extend further across apetito’s customers later this year.

Through this scheme, all of the plastic meal trays used in apetito’s Specialist Nutrition range can be washed and returned after use and recycled into brand-new trays – right here in the UK. The recycling system guarantees that 100% of trays returned will be recycled into new trays – compare that to UK household recycling where due to the lack of infrastructure nearly 50% ends up being sent abroad for recycling – with uncertain results.

Participation in the initiative is set to save each care home an estimated 113kg CO2e per year*, supporting partnering homes to bring down their carbon emissions and minimise their impacts on the environment, as well as reducing waste costs.

Lee Sheppard, Director of Corporate Affairs, Policy and Sustainability at apetito is proud of the s

ignificant success seen from this scheme across its Consumer and Healthcare businesses and sees a real opportunity to support partnering homes to reduce their carbon footprint.

“To date, we have seen brilliant results and had positive receptions of this scheme from both our Wiltshire Farm Foods and Healthcare customers and have collected back an over 25 million trays to be recycled. Reducing environmental impacts is becoming a growing priority for all businesses, and so we’re pleased to be able to work closely with our partnering care homes to help tackle their carbon emissions and provide a more sustainable packaging option through our closed-loop recycling scheme. Participation also has the potential to drive cost efficiencies for care homes through reducing waste collection costs, at a time when cost inflation is a real concern for the sector.”

*Based on one home returning 20 trays per day