Unilever : Our fight on food waste – from production to plate

If not possible to redistribute our food waste via our charity partners, it is used to feed animals or to power our factories.

More than a quarter of the food waste from our factories in the UK is used to power our factories or the national grid and more than 11,000 tonnes of food across our UK factories is sent to feed animals every year.

For example, at our Burton factory we take brewer's yeast, a by-product from beer production that would otherwise go to waste, to make Marmite. Waste generated from the Marmite manufacturing process goes into an on-site anaerobic digester which produces bio-gas used to fuel the boilers. These, in turn, produce steam to run the plant. This circular approach to waste provides 50% of the gas needed to power the factory.

Our Gloucester ice cream factory makes ice brands including Magnum, Cornetto and Solero. If any products do not meet our quality specifications, they are recovered and reworked into other products. If it's not possible to rework the product, it is sent off-site for animal feed, including to some very lucky pigs!

The remainder of our food waste that cannot be redistributed to people, used to feed animals, or re-used to power our factories, is either used for industrial composting or for land application where it is used as fertiliser, or it goes to incineration with energy capture.