31^st July 2008

Schwan turns to TEG to help reduce its carbon footprint

Like many companies, major food manufacturer Schwan Consumer Brands is constantly looking at ways to reduce carbon footprint.  The multi-national company is best known in the UK for its Chicago Town pizzas which are manufactured in Leyland, Lancashire. The Leyland site currently recycles around 83% of waste produced and is aiming to increase this to 90% by 2009.

The company first began recycling cardboard 10 years ago and has gradually introduced other schemes, including plastic, paper and metal recycling. Food recycling, though, has always been an issue due to the small numbers of recycling facilities available to recycle food waste. Schwan investigated a number of options, including incineration, before finally settling on composting.  They have been working with composting specialist TEG Environmental for nearly three years.  Business Development Manager Mike Hyland said that Schwan's was attracted to TEG because the company had a local facility in Preston and the food waste was not being transported over long distances for recycling, which would have counter-balanced the carbon footprint benefits. 

"Approximately 3% of production is scrap from our site here in Leyland and it is good to know that it travels just a short distance for recycling," he added.  On arrival at the TEG plant the food waste is mixed with green waste before being fed into TEG's award-winning in-vessel silo composting cages. After two or three weeks the compost is offloaded and then marketed for agricultural, horticultural and domestic uses.

"The whole process runs extremely smoothly and we are very pleased with the efficiency of the TEG team," said Mike Hyland.

Any company or organisation in Lancashire or Yorkshire that produces food waste is able to sign up for this specialist service.  For further information please call James Westcott at TEG Environmental on 01772 314100.

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