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Greene King reports saving more than 600,000 pints of water daily and 98% diversion of waste from landfill

Pub chain and brewer Greene King, which operates over 2800 pubs, restaurants and hotels across the UK, has published its latest strategy report.

Self Supply Water

The report includes updates against a number of sustainability targets and reveals that Greene King is saving more than 600,000 pints of water each day since obtaining a self-supply licence to deliver its own water and wastewater services last year.

Greene King highlight that the switch to self-supply has enabled the company to reduce its water footprint by more than 140,000m3 since April 2017. Daily, Greene King has realised 384.32m3 in consumption savings - the equivalent of 676,313 pints.

The company's full portfolio of 3,000 water supply points was switched. Site-level engagement was noted as a driver of efficiency, improved savings and greater control over supply in the report.

Waste Not, Want Not

Greene King also report progress towards their 2020 target of sending zero waste to landfill. In partnership with SWRnewstar Greene King last year diverted 98% of waste from landfill across its operations - a 3% year-on-year increase. This included 10,933 tonnes of food waste, which was sent to anaerobic digestion facilities where it produced enough electricity to power 9,840 UK homes for a month, according to the report.

Greene King additionally reports sending more than 3,000,000 litres of waste cooking oil from its kitchens for recycling. Used cooking oils can be refined into biofuels which burn cleanly and have low carbon content. An additional benefit of recycling cooking oil is that it results in less oil and fat making it's way into the sewage system and contributing to blocked drains. 

As well as maximising recycling a wider supply chain initiative has removed 100,000 boxes from Greene King's annual packaging requirements. Reusable containers have be introduced resulting in an overall reduction in single use, disposable packaging coming into kitchens.

The full report is available here:

http://www.greenekingreports.com/ar18/application/files/8315/3267/9592/Greene_King_plc_Annual_report_2018.pdf

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Greene King is committed to operating its business in a sustainable way and was the first pub company to apply for a licence to self-supply water, enabling us to reduce water usage in our business. We were the first major pub company in the UK to pledge that by 2020 we will send zero waste to landfill.
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