Supermarket chain cuts waste and costs
To reduce costs through innovation and process improvement
As waste and resource management partner, we work to identify projects with the supermarket’s staff to improve processes at its sites and achieve cost savings. These are then outlined and agreed in an annual activity plan.
SUEZ manages the improvement projects and guarantees to achieve the savings quantified in the plan.
Benchmarking solution to achieve performance
SUEZ has committed to control waste management costs at every location. Through regular market benchmarking, we ensure that these costs are minimised. We underwrite this obligation by agreeing to repay any cost savings that are not ultimately achieved.
We have introduced an innovative method of benchmarking the waste performance of each of the customer’s sites using existing data. Based on this analysis, we target audits at the best and worst-performing sites to identify the various factors affecting efficiency.
One of the main factors is how well the locations follow the processes designed for managing their different waste streams. At sites with poorer performance, for example, cardboard, plastic and dry mixed recyclables were often disposed of in the general waste stream. Improved communication plans and staff education, along with revised collection frequencies matched to demand, resolved these shortcomings.
Our first review was conducted shortly after the contract began, as a like-for-like exercise to maintain existing service schedules. This generated £119,000 in annual cost savings for our customer.
Cost-savings continue to be achieved as a result of ongoing improvement projects. In the last quarter, savings of around £30,000 were achieved.
Encouraging a ‘right waste, right place’ mentality reduced costs at poorer performing sites as the general waste stream shrank by around 15%, releasing annual savings in the region of £75,000. Most of this was achieved by re-directing recyclable materials into the right stream and reducing cost associated with landfill.
SUEZ and the supermarket chain continue to work together on further improvement projects.