Compass Group UK & Ireland marks Stop Food Waste Day – engaging with thousands of colleagues, school children and customers
*Annual celebration takes place 30th April 2025*
Today marks Compass’ 9th annual Stop Food Waste Day, which aims to raise awareness around this important issue.
The organisation has activities taking place across the business and client sites. Initiatives include Eurest running a food waste challenge and Foodbuy Group reaching a milestone of over 600-hours, after committing to 1,000 hours of volunteering less than a year ago, with food redistribution partner FareShare. Overall, the partnership with FareShare, which started in 2014, has saved 434 tonnes of good to eat food (the equivalent of 1,033,354 meals).
With 25-30% of the world’s food produced lost or wasted* – addressing food waste has never been so important. Compass Group UK & Ireland aims to stop food waste through preventing, recovering and recycling. The company continues to roll out and evolve its digital recording system, which measures waste in up to five categories providing data and insight into the source of waste to help tackle it.
Within the UK & Ireland business, 2025 Stop Food Waste Day activities include:
- Chartwells – will host pop ups, assemblies and workshops taking place across the week within schools, universities and colleges to educate and inform young people. Chartwells will be sharing a prerecorded assembly, with the Primary schools it works with, for use this summer term. A Chartwells chef has also developed a ‘Waste Warrior’ recipe book.
- CH&CO - has delivered Sustainability Training for Culinary Experts across its brands, which includes a focus on food waste with each participant creating five viable actions to take back to their site and implement. Across the brands, food waste knowledge and action has also been made a requirement for chefs to demonstrate in all culinary competitions.
- Compass One including ESS, Healthcare, One Retail and White Oaks – has launched its ‘Future Food’ sustainability engagement programme. Developed specifically for frontline colleagues, it aims to drive the knowledge and skills required to support and drive change. The programme comprises concise, engaging videos delivered by AI-generated avatars combined with real in-unit footage. The first instalment launched with a food waste focus.
- ESS – is a finalist for the Food Waste Initiative of the Year at the Awards for Excellence in Recycling and Waste Management which is being announced on 1st May. This is for the partnership with Olio to redistribute good-to-eat surplus food to local communities.
- Eurest and 14forty – challenged people to look in their fridge at home and use leftovers as the basis for a healthy meal, sharing ideas and innovations. Alex Ricketts, joint MD of Eurest, did his challenge at an evening of volunteering with charity partner Foodcycle (Alex has now completed 60 hours of volunteering in 12 months). He used food donated at the local Foodcycle event.
- Foodbuy Group – making progress towards the team achieving 1,000 volunteering hours with FareShare. 610 hours have been completed.
- Levy UK + Ireland – launched a food waste recipe competition on Earth Day (22nd April) about innovative ways to save food from going in the bin. The winner will be announced on Stop Food Waste Day.
- Restaurant Associates – organised a Sustainability Conference, where senior chefs showcased inspiring zero-waste recipes. The team held a Stop Food Waste Day celebration at Unity Place in Milton Keynes, where its bakery team transformed leftover croissant trimmings into cruffins, as well as featuring pop-ups from partners like Waste Knot across sites, to champion the use of surplus produce.
- Compass Ireland – serving Stop Food Waste Day recipes across the business this week, accompanied by fact sheets and recipe cards within sites. Chefs are delivering cooking demonstrations for customers to watch and try samples, plus an information campaign involving four training sessions for all chefs during the month of April has been running - sharing tips and advice to minimise food waste.
- Compass – has hosted food waste focussed suppliers at its head office in Chertsey and served specially created food waste menus for colleagues in its Parklands and Chertsey offices.
Ashleigh Taylor, Head of Environment, Compass Group UK & Ireland commented: “Reducing food waste is a central focus to our business, teams and clients all year round. Saving food brings with it commercial benefits, but it is crucial in creating a more sustainable way of operating. Stop Food Waste Day is a time to highlight the issue of food waste, to share ideas and raise further awareness both internally and externally.”
Nick Male, Executive Chef at Unity Place in Milton Keynes: “We work hard all year round to minimise waste across everything we do – from prep to plate. It’s a constant effort, but it’s one we believe in.
“From our day-to-day preparation to the occasional special dish or reuse initiative, we take a considered approach to food waste across Unity Place. Stop Food Waste Day is a good opportunity to highlight some of those quieter efforts and show how even small amounts of surplus can be put to good use.”
Stop Food Waste Day was launched by Compass Group USA with the aim of raising awareness around reducing food waste.
* Action on food waste | WRAP - The Waste and Resources Action Programme
