Tackling waste at the Eden Project

With over a million people visiting the Eden Project every year, we have to think carefully about the waste we produce. That means not only reducing and recycling where we can, but carefully choosing which materials we buy in the first place.

How we watch our waste at Eden

When we first built Eden we set ourselves the target of becoming ‘Waste Neutral’. A bit like being carbon neutral, we aimed to ‘balance’ what we sent for recycling and disposal (eg aggregates) with what we bought in as recycled products (eg soil), based on weight.

Now that we've built Eden, we manage our day-today operations with a view to reducing our waste as much as possible. When we buy in new products we try to choose those which are recycled – to help stimulate the market for them. Here's how we do it:

Measure

We audit our operations to check we’re not wasting materials. A good example of this is that we used to have more disposable crockery in our restaurants but we found that we could employ extra staff to sort waste and wash crockery – and still save money and reduce landfill.

Reduce

We work with our suppliers to reduce the amount of packaging brought on to site. For example, we try to use returnable crates instead of boxes and we even collaborate with producers on product design to reduce the amount of packaging on goods we sell in our shop.

Reuse

We have an on-site waste and recycling compound where we sort everything. Our maintenance and design teams can often be found scouring this for things that they can turn into something else.

Recycle

We make sure, wherever possible, that what we buy can be recycled at the end of its life. Sometimes we team up with other local businesses to make it economically viable to send a small amount of a certain material for recycling.

Reinvest

We reinvest in the recycling industry by buying recycled stuff – from toilet rolls for the several hundred on-site loos to the lovely gifts we sell in our shop.

Waste reduction at Eden

Here's some examples of how we try to reduce our waste