Food waste handling for UK food businesses

What food waste control is for

Assimilated Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, in the food waste chapter of Annex II, requires food waste and other refuse to be removed from rooms where food is present as quickly as possible, so it does not accumulate. Waste has to be put in closable containers, unless you can show the authority that another system is adequate. Those containers have to be sound, easy to clean and, where necessary, easy to disinfect. You need enough storage, and the refuse store has to be managed so it can be kept clean and, where necessary, free of animals and pests. Waste must not become a direct or indirect source of contamination.

The Food Standards Agency's Safer Food, Better Business pack for caterers treats that duty as ordinary kitchen practice. Food is covered and put away at close. Rubbish does not sit in the food room overnight. Bins in the kitchen have lids that fit. External bins are not left open, leaking, or pushed against the door you use for deliveries. The opening checks already ask you to look at cleanliness and at signs of pests. A bin area that fails those looks is a failed check, even if the fridge log is neat.

Waste law sits beside that hygiene duty. It is not optional once the plates are scraped. In England, the Separation of Waste (England) Regulations 2024, part of Simpler Recycling, require workplaces with 10 or more full-time-equivalent employees to have separate collections in place from 31 March 2025 for food waste, dry recyclable materials, and residual waste. Workplaces with fewer than 10 full-time-equivalent employees have until 31 March 2027. England does not use a "5 kilogram a week" threshold. If the premises produces food waste and the size rule applies, that food waste is collected separately. Paper and card are separated from other dry recyclables unless your collector takes them mixed. The Environment Agency regulates this duty in England. Count full-time-equivalent staff for the business. If you run several sites and you are unsure which date applies, check the Agency's guidance rather than guessing from one café's rota.

Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland already expect many businesses to present food waste separately, and they do use a quantity threshold. The usual trigger is more than 5 kilograms of food waste in a seven-day period. Rural sites in Scotland can fall outside the duty, so do not assume an exemption without checking. Wales also restricts putting food waste to sewer from business premises, which means a sink macerator is not a substitute for a collection. A disposer anywhere in the UK does not meet a separation duty. It also sends oil and food into drains that block, smell, and attract flies. Scottish businesses should follow Food Standards Scotland on the hygiene side and SEPA or the local authority on the waste side. The hygiene rule does not wait for the recycling date: waste still leaves the food room, bins still close, and pests are still your problem on the day you open.

This guide is about handling, storage, collection, contamination and records in a catering kitchen. It is not a substitute for the stock-rotation habit that stops food becoming waste in the first place. The FIFO guide and the use-by and best-before guide cover dates. Throwing food away because it is past its use-by date is the safe outcome. Keeping it to improve a waste figure is not.

Separate the streams before anything else

Mixing waste is how a compliant collection becomes a contaminated one. Decide the streams for your site and label the containers in words the Saturday team will follow. A colour code that lives only in the manager's head will be wrong by the second week.

• Food waste. Plate scrapings, prep trimmings, spoiled fruit, tea bags and coffee grounds, and food you have thrown away because it is out of date, dropped, or unsafe. This includes food that contains meat, fish, dairy, eggs or other products of animal origin. In a catering kitchen, treat that material as catering waste.
• Used cooking oil. A separate lidded drum or tank, not the food-waste caddy and not the sink. Oil in the food bin leaks, and oil in the drain is a blockage and a pollution problem. The Food Standards Agency expects waste cooking oil from catering premises to be stored so it cannot spill and to be collected by an authorised collector.
• Dry recycling. Clean packaging, cans, plastic bottles and, where your collector asks for it separately, paper and card. Flatten card. Cardboard is also nesting material for pests, so it does not live in a pile beside the yard bin. Rinse packaging only if your collector requires it and the rinse water is not a new slip hazard.
• Glass. Bottles and jars in the container your collector specifies. Broken glass from a kitchen accident is a foreign-body incident first: stop, keep it out of food, and do not sweep it into the food-waste caddy where someone will find it later with their hands.
• Residual waste. What is left after the other streams. If residual bins are full of food, the separation has already failed. Do not "just this once" bury food under a liner because the caddy is in the yard.

Put the food caddy where scrapings happen, not where ready-to-eat food is plated if you can avoid it. A busy pass often has a small lidded caddy because walking to the pot wash every plate is fantasy. That caddy is then a hygiene control: lid on between uses, emptied before it overflows, and never used as a shelf for a clean plate. Prep waste from raw meat stays out of the ready-to-eat area. Carry it to the bin by a route that does not cross the salad bench. The raw and ready-to-eat guide is the rule for that route. Waste does not get a free pass across the kitchen because it is "only going to the bin".

Tell the team what does not go in the food caddy. Packaging, gloves, blue roll, broken china and cleaning cloths belong elsewhere. A collector who finds a glove in every sack may refuse the load. A chef who finds a can ring in the food bin has a foreign-body problem in the wrong container, which usually means the same carelessness is happening on the board. Liquids in large amounts, including leftover soup tipped as a flood, blow the liner and leak onto the floor. Scrape, then empty liquids in the way you have written, often down a drain that is meant for it only where that is allowed, or into the caddy in amounts the liner can hold. In Wales, do not treat the sewer as the food-waste system.

Bins inside food rooms

Internal bins are closable, sound, and easy to clean. A cracked bin, a lid that no longer meets the rim, and a foot pedal that is stuck open all fail the "closable container" idea. Foot-operated lids help because hands stay off the lid. They are not a legal brand requirement. If the pedal is broken, either repair it or make sure people can open the lid without touching it with the hand that is about to garnish a plate. A hand that lifts a dirty lid and then picks up parsley is a contamination event you can watch happen.

Line the bin if that is how you keep it clean. Change the liner before it splits, not after the floor has been mopped twice around a leak. Do not let the liner fold over the outside of the bin and trail on the floor. That trail is a wick for dirt and a trip hazard. Keep a spare liner at the station so "we ran out" is not the reason a bin stands open. Spare liners live in a cupboard, not draped over the clean-plate shelf.

Empty food-waste bins from food rooms often enough that they do not overflow, smell, or sit through a service they cannot cope with. A breakfast café may empty once mid-morning and again at close. A busy takeaway on a Friday may empty several times between opening and the last order. Write the rhythm you will actually keep, and write the extra empty that happens when the caddy is full early. "As required" with no one named becomes "when someone is irritated". Name the person on the close, and name who may be called during service.

Clean the bin itself, not only the liner. Smears on the lid, food in the pedal, and a base that has never been washed are what flies use between collections. Put bin cleaning on the cleaning schedule at a frequency that matches how soiled they get. Many kitchens wash internal food bins daily and external bins weekly, and both after a leak. Use the chemicals you already approve for that surface, rinse if the product requires it, and let the bin dry before the next liner goes in. Do not wash a food bin in the sink you use for salad leaves. Use the pot wash or an outside tap and a brush you do not then use on a chopping board.

Where the bin stands matters as much as how often it is emptied. Keep it off the ready-to-eat bench, away from the wash-hand basin, and far enough from clean equipment that a swing of the lid does not drip onto a tray. Do not store a spare sack of potatoes on the lid. Do not leave the bin in front of the only hand basin, which is a failure the handwashing guide already treats as serious. If the only place for the caddy is close to plating, the control is a lid that is shut, a smaller caddy that is emptied more often, and a wash immediately after anyone touches it.

Hands, cloths and the contamination path

The usual route from waste back into food is a hand, then a cloth, then a handle. Anyone who scrapes plates, ties a sack, pushes a wheelie bin, or wipes a lid washes their hands with soap and warm water before they touch food or a food-contact surface. Gloves do not cancel that. A glove that tied the sack is a dirty glove. It comes off, the hands are washed, and a new glove goes on only if your method uses gloves for the next job. The handwashing guide sets out the moments. Waste handling is one of them. Write it on the safe method so it is not left as "use your common sense" at 9pm.

Cloths are the second route. A cloth that wipes the bin lid, the pedal, or the floor around a leak does not wipe the pass, the fridge handle, or the probe. Keep the bin cloth separate, or throw it away. Safer Food, Better Business already expects you to control cloths so they do not spread bacteria. Waste areas are a reason that rule exists. If someone uses the "general" cloth on the caddy and then on a chopping board, treat it as a cross-contamination incident: stop, wash the board and the surface, replace the cloth, and throw away any ready-to-eat food the cloth or the hands may have touched. Record it the way you record any other corrective action. The corrective actions guide is the shape of that note: what happened, what you did now, and what will stop the repeat.

Raw trimmings add a third route. A bin of chicken skin left open beside a garnish tray is raw food in the ready-to-eat zone, even though you intend to throw it away. Juices on the outside of a sack are the same as juices on a board. Double-bag if the liner leaks, wipe the outside, and wash your hands. Do not stack that sack on a worktop "for a minute" while you plate. The minute is how drip becomes a complaint and an outbreak investigation.

Allergens travel the same careless way. Waste itself is not served, but a scraper, a glove, or a splash from a bin of peanut-sauce plates onto a free-from dessert is still allergen cross-contact. Keep the free-from station clear of the waste route. If a splash lands on food or on a clean surface, throw the food away and clean the surface. Do not wipe through it and carry on. Customers with allergies are not protected by a recycling target.

Outside storage

External refuse storage is part of the premises standard, not a corner you hope the officer will skip. Hard standing under the bins, a lid that closes, and enough capacity for the busiest day of your collection cycle are the minimum that works. A bin that cannot shut because card and food are rammed in together is an open invitation to flies, foxes, birds and rats. The pest-control guide explains why that matters. Pests do not distinguish between a hygiene inspection and a missed collection. They use the leak.

• Lids and integrity. Lids fit. Wheels and lids are not cracked so that rain and rats get in. If a bin is damaged, ask the collector for a replacement and write the date you asked. A bin with a brick on the lid is not closed.
• Distance and doors. Store bins where they do not force you to prop the kitchen door, and not tight against a wall where you cannot clean behind them. A propped door is a pest entrance. The same door left open while someone "just takes the sack out" is how a mouse inspection starts.
• Leaks and wash-down. A leak across the yard toward the back door will be walked into the kitchen. Clean it the same day. Disinfect the area if the leak is food waste. Do not hose a filthy yard so the water runs under the door into the pot wash.
• Separation outside as well as in. Food waste, recycling, residual waste and oil each have a container. A single overfilled general bin means the internal separation was theatre.
• Cardboard and clutter. Flattened card goes in its container, not in a stack that becomes a nest between collections. Unused equipment and pallets do not live against the bin store.
• Security. Bins the public can fill with their own rubbish, or knock over, will overflow on the day before collection. If you share a yard, agree who locks the lid and who calls when the neighbour's waste lands in your food bin.

Frequency follows volume, weather and pests. A small sandwich shop in cool weather may cope with two food-waste collections a week. A restaurant in July, or any site that has already had flies, may need more. Do not leave food waste standing for a week because the contract was sold as "weekly" and nobody has revisited it. Smell, maggots, leaking leachate and bins that are full two days early are evidence the frequency is wrong. Change the contract and write why. Heat shortens the time you can hold waste without a problem. So does a weekend when you are closed and the bin was full on Saturday night. Collection calendars should know your closed days.

Cleaning the store is a scheduled job. Include the wall behind the bins, the drain in the yard, and the lids. A contractor who swaps a bin and leaves the old footprint of slime is not finishing the job. Your team still owns the yard between visits. If bin cleaning is in the waste contract, keep the visit sheet. If it is yours, put it on the cleaning schedule and record it the same way as any other task you could skip under pressure.

Collections, carriers and notes

You have a duty of care for the waste you produce. In practice that means you only pass it to someone authorised to take it, you describe it well enough that they can handle it lawfully, and you keep the paperwork. For ordinary non-hazardous waste in England and Wales, that paperwork is a waste transfer note, and the usual retention period is two years. A season ticket or annual note can cover repeated collections of the same waste from the same place, if it actually describes what you produce. A note that says "general waste" while you also hand over food waste and oil is a poor description. Scotland and Northern Ireland use the same idea of a written description and an authorised carrier. Keep whatever document your carrier and your regulator expect, and be able to find it.

Check the carrier is registered. In England that is the Environment Agency public register. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own registers. A cheap cash collection with no note and no registration is how food waste ends up fly-tipped, and the duty of care can still sit with you. Ask for the registration number before the first collection, look it up, and diary the expiry if they give you one. Oil collectors and animal-by-product carriers need the right permission too. Catering waste and used cooking oil are not a favour a mate with a van can remove. Government guidance expects catering waste and animal by-product food waste to move with an authorised carrier, such as a registered waste carrier or a haulier registered with the Animal and Plant Health Agency where that registration is the right one.

The note should be specific enough to defend. Useful fields are the parties, the address, the date or the period the season ticket covers, the amount or the number of bins, the description (food waste, used cooking oil, mixed dry recycling), how it is contained, and the place it is going if that is known. You do not need a novel. You do need to tell a visiting officer, or an Environment Agency officer, who took the food waste last month. Store notes where the manager can find them, not in a driver's cab. A digital copy is fine if you can open it without a password only one ex-employee knows.

On collection day, someone from the business should know the bins went. A missed collection is an operational incident, not a shrug. Bagged food waste must not pile up in the kitchen because the wagon did not come. Call the contractor the same day, ask for a recovery collection, and if the delay will push you into overflow, arrange a lawful alternative rather than a car boot. Write the miss, the call, and the date the waste actually left. That note is also a pest-control note. If the miss lasts long enough for maggots, clean and record that too.

Keep the bin store ready before the wagon arrives. Contaminated bins get rejected. A rejected food bin that then sits for another week in the sun is a hygiene failure you caused with a few plastic gloves in the caddy. Train the close-down crew on contamination rules from the collector's leaflet, not from memory of a sales call. If the collector changes the rules, change the labels the same week.

Used cooking oil

Waste cooking oil from a catering kitchen is both a hygiene hazard and a pollution hazard. The Food Standards Agency's guidance on food and cooking oil waste says the oil must be stored so that none of it spills, and that it must be collected by an authorised collector. It must not be poured down drains or sewers. It must not be thrown out with the rest of the kitchen waste, because it leaks, it contaminates the food-waste load, and it is awkward to clean when a sack splits. It must not be used as animal feed, or as an ingredient in animal feed. That ban is about animal disease, including foot and mouth, and it applies to scraps and oil from catering premises.

Store oil in a container designed for it, with a lid, on a tray or bund if a spill would run into a drain or the kitchen. Keep it out of the food room if you can. A drum beside the fryer during service is a burn risk and a splash risk onto food. Decant carefully when the oil has cooled enough to handle, using a funnel you clean afterwards. Mark the drum "used cooking oil" so nobody mistakes it for fresh oil or for a waste liquid they can tip away. Do not store it in a former food container that could be mistaken for stock. Wipe spills as soon as they happen, and wash the hands and the cloth afterwards. A greasy door handle is a hand-contamination point the whole shift will use.

The collector should leave a record: date, quantity, who took it. Keep it with the other waste notes. If oil is building up faster than the collection, book a shorter interval before the drum overflows. An overflowing drum in a July yard is a slip, a pest feed, and a reason for a neighbour to complain to the council, who may then visit for hygiene as well. Never "top up" a full drum by pouring the difference down the outside drain. That drain is not a disposal route, and the stain will still be there when someone inspects.

Catering waste is not animal feed

Any waste food from a restaurant, café, pub kitchen, school kitchen, care-home kitchen, canteen, or a shop that makes sandwiches on site is catering waste. Government guidance is plain: you must never send catering waste for farm-animal feed or pet food. The ban includes processed catering waste, sometimes called swill. It exists to stop animal disease reaching the food chain. A baker's leftover bread can, in some tightly controlled cases, be a former foodstuff for feed, but only if it has been kept entirely separate from meat, fish, sauce, and the rest of the catering waste. Most small kitchens cannot prove that separation once the bread has sat on the pass or in a mixed bin. The safe default for a caterer is: kitchen waste goes to an authorised waste collector, not to a smallholding, a member of staff's chickens, a customer's dog, or a "pig club".

Staff taking a box of scraps home for animals is a common, well-meant breach. Put it in the safe method in one sentence: no food waste leaves for animals. Offer a staff meal policy if you want people fed. That is not the same as a bag of raw trimmings and plate scrapings. Plate scrapings have already been in front of customers. They are waste.

If you ever supply genuinely separate former foodstuffs into the feed chain, that is a different regulated activity, with feed hygiene rules and a hard separation from catering waste at every stage, including the bins. Do not start it because a collector offered a lower price. Read the Food Standards Agency guidance on supplying food into the animal feed chain, and keep catering waste in its own stream. If you cannot explain the separation to an officer in a minute, you are not doing it.

Surplus that is still safe to eat

Reducing waste starts before food is waste. Plan production, rotate stock, and chill food that can be kept. The food and drink waste hierarchy used across government puts prevention first, then redistribution for people, and only then recycling routes such as anaerobic digestion. Redistribution is lawful only while the food is still safe. You must not use, sell, or donate food after its use-by date. Past that date it is waste, including when a charity would like it and including when it still smells normal. Best-before food can be sold or redistributed if it is still acceptable to eat. That is a quality judgement, not a dare. The use-by guide sets out the difference. Do not let a waste target lean on anyone to stretch a use-by date.

If you donate surplus or sell it on, the allergen information has to travel with it. Food is unsafe if the allergen information is wrong, and that includes food you give away. Chilled food stays chilled on the way. Hot food is not left on a side until a volunteer arrives at an unknown time. Label what it is, the date, and the allergens. Agree who receives it and what happens if they do not arrive before the food is no longer safe. If the collection is late and the food has sat in the danger zone, it is waste, not a donation you are "a bit unhappy about". Write the arrangement into the safe method so a well-meaning closer does not invent a new one on a Saturday.

Frozen food you freeze before the use-by date, while it is still safe, is a different decision from donating food that has already expired. Follow the labelling rules in the use-by guide: a new label, the date you froze it, and a rule for how long you keep it. Do not freeze food to dodge a bin weight. Freeze it only when the product can be frozen safely and you will actually use it.

Waste figures are not a reason to serve food you would not eat yourself, or to hide a failed fridge. If the salad well was at 12°C and you throw the food away, that is a corrective action with a temperature, not a mysterious spike in the caddy. Record the temperature failure in the diary. The waste sack is the consequence, not the record.

When a collection is missed or a bin fails

Decide the response before the Friday it happens. A short written line in the safe method is enough: who to call, where bags may stand for a few hours, what you will not do, and when you stop production of the waste-heavy menu if you have nowhere lawful to put it. Bags of food waste do not belong in the customer toilet, the dry store, or the fridge. A fridge is for food you are keeping safe, not for sacks of waste, which will contaminate the shelves and the hands that move them. If you have a second external bin with a lid, use that. If you do not, pay for the emergency collection.

A split bin in the yard is the same kind of incident. Move the waste into a sound container, keep it lidded, clean the ground, and tell the contractor. Look for pests that afternoon and at the next opening, because a leak is a feeding station. If oil has gone into a rain gully, stop the flow with what you have that is safe, do not hose it further down the drain, and call the collector or the water company advice line if the spill is more than a wipe. Write what left the site and what you cleaned.

At the 4-weekly review, look at misses, rejected bins, leaks, and any diary line where someone handled waste and then food. If the same caddy overflows every Saturday, the fix is capacity or frequency, not a sharper telling-off. If oil notes are missing, the fix is a folder and a person, not a hope that the driver "always emails". Review is where waste stops being a chore and becomes a managed control.

What environmental health officers check

An environmental health officer at a food hygiene visit is not auditing your recycling rate. They are looking at contamination, cleanliness, pests, and whether your method is real. Waste is one of the fastest ways they form a view, because the bin store is often on the way in. The Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales, SEPA or the Northern Ireland Environment Agency may look separately at separation and duty of care. Officers talk to each other when a yard is bad enough. Fix the yard for both reasons.

• Whether food waste is removed from food rooms often enough that it is not overflowing, smelling, or left overnight in an open sack.
• Whether bins in the kitchen close, are clean enough to use, and are not blocking the wash-hand basin or sitting on a ready-to-eat bench.
• Whether staff can say when they wash their hands after waste, and whether you can point to a cloth rule that keeps bin cloths off boards.
• Whether the external store is lidded, not leaking into the doorway, and free of obvious pest attraction: maggots, heavy fly activity, split bags, card stacked for nests.
• Whether used oil is stored closed, away from food, and collected rather than poured away.
• Whether the diary shows what you did when a bin failed or a collection was missed, including food you threw away because it was contaminated.
• Whether someone can find the recent transfer notes or season ticket and name the carrier.
• Whether surplus-food donations, if you do them, stop at the use-by date and carry allergen information.

A tidy temperature log does not cancel an open bin and a trail of leaks. A perfect waste contract does not cancel a chef who scrapes plates and garnishes with the same gloves. The inspection checklist is the wider visit. Waste is the part they can often see before you have found the folder. Show them the lid that fits, the note from the last collection, and a team that washes after the sack. That is the control working.

Worked example

A 48-cover bistro has a lidded food caddy at the pot wash and a small lidded caddy at the pass, emptied whenever it is half full during Friday and Saturday service. External food waste is collected twice a week. Used oil is in a lidded drum on a tray in the yard, collected monthly. The carrier is on the public register, and a season ticket describing food waste, mixed recycling and residual waste sits in the office folder with the oil receipts. The safe method says: no scraps for animals, nothing past its use-by date is donated, hands are washed after bins, and a missed collection is phoned the same day.

On a warm Tuesday the lunchtime wagon does not come. By 6pm the pass caddy is full and a cook, rushing, scrapes a plate, touches the lid, and reaches for chopped herbs for a ready-to-eat starter. The sous chef stops the plate. The herbs and the started dish go in the waste. The cook washes hands. The caddy is emptied into a tied sack only because the outside food bin still has a little room and its lid still shuts. They do not stand sacks in the dry store. The manager phones the contractor at 6:20pm, is offered a recovery collection for Wednesday morning, and writes the diary: "Food collection missed. Pass caddy overflow risk. Herbs and one plated starter binned after lid contact. Hands washed. Recovery booked Wednesday AM. Yard bin lid closed."

Wednesday morning the yard smells and a small leak has run from the food bin toward the back door. They photograph it, keep the door shut, and scoop the leak into the bin rather than hosing it under the threshold. They wash the yard with the outside tap, away from the kitchen, and look for pests: no maggots yet, a few flies. The recovery wagon takes the food waste at 10am. The transfer is covered by the season ticket, and they note the extra lift in the diary. The oil drum is checked at the same time. The lid is on. It is not due for three weeks and is only a third full, so they leave the interval alone.

At the 4-weekly review the manager adds two changes. Friday and Saturday pass caddies are emptied at a set time as well as when half full, because "when someone notices" failed. The waste contractor is asked for a standing hot-weather extra lift in July and August, written into the contract note. The cook who touched the lid is not blamed in the review note. The note says the herbs were thrown away and the next service used a smaller caddy that is harder to ignore. That is a waste control: the food that might have been contaminated was not served, the miss was recovered lawfully, and the frequency changed because the evidence said it should.

Common mistakes

• Leaving food waste in the kitchen overnight because the outside bin is full or the yard is dark.
• Using a bin with no lid, or a lid propped open with a tray, in a room where food is open.
• Washing hands only at the end of a bin run, after the garnish or the fridge handle.
• Wiping the bin and the chopping board with one cloth.
• Putting food waste in the residual bin because the caddy was not emptied, then calling the separation "done".
• Pouring used oil down the drain, or into the food-waste sack.
• Letting staff take plate scrapings or raw trimmings home for animals.
• Donating food after the use-by date to avoid a heavy bin.
• A cash collection with no transfer note and no check that the carrier is registered.
• Ignoring a missed wagon until flies are obvious, and hosing bin juice under the kitchen door.
• Blocking the wash-hand basin with the waste caddy or with sacks waiting to go out.
• Treating a sink macerator as the food-waste policy, especially where food waste must be collected separately or must not go to sewer.

Where this comes from

The hygiene duty to remove food waste from food rooms, to use closable containers, and to keep refuse storage clean and free of pests comes from assimilated Regulation (EC) No 852/2004. Safer Food, Better Business for caterers expects those controls in daily practice. The Food Standards Agency's page on food and cooking oil waste is the public statement on storing used oil, keeping it out of drains, using an authorised collector, and not sending catering scraps or oil for animal feed. Surplus food is covered by the government food and drink waste hierarchy: do not use, sell or donate food past its use-by date. In England, separate food-waste collection for workplaces is in the Separation of Waste (England) Regulations 2024, with the 31 March 2025 and 31 March 2027 dates depending on staff numbers. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own thresholds and regulators. Put your own bins, frequencies, carrier and corrective actions into the safe method your team is trained on, and check at the 4-weekly review that the yard still matches the contract.