Sustainability

Most of the cooking is done using Rational Ovens and Vario Cooking units, which are latest and most energy efficient pieces of equipment in a commercial kitchen.

We record all our food waste at St Faith’s, which includes the plate waste. The kitchen team work very hard to reduce the amount of food waste and with their hard work this is paying off, as we have the lowest amount of food waste in the Chartwells schools. We also try and use the whole vegetable and fruit e.g.: using broccoli stalks to make kimchi, pakoras, soup and in our quiches, we use the cauliflower leaves, dried carrot skins in our carrot cakes etc, onion skins to make onion bread and fruit trimmings to make flavoured water.

We have also worked hard with the Eco Committee to help try and reduce the school’s plate waste by making the children aware of the impact food waste has on the environment.

We also supporting the Cambridge Sustainable Food group by helping volunteer during the school holidays by cooking for the local communities across Cambridge.

We have recently installed solar panels above Firwood that will supply most of the power that the kitchen and servery use each day.

Over the last few years, we have virtually eliminated the use of cleaning chemicals in the housekeeping department. We have also implemented other environmental and cost-effective cleaning solutions in the school.

We use Tersano Lotus Pro as our general cleaning sanitiser across the school. This is a water-based sanitiser that contains no chemicals and works by putting ozone into the water. We had our first dispenser installed a year before the Covid outbreak. This proved invaluable to our cleaning during Covid, as this was one of the first sanitisers proven to kill Covid (plus other dangerous bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, MRSA). We have since installed 2 other dispensers. More info here: Tersano SAO Dispenser – Tersano Inc. (CA)

Rather than using a traditional mop and bucket to clean the hard floors we use i-mops, which clean up to 70% faster and 90% cleaner than conventional wet mopping and uses much less water. We fill the i-mops with the Tersano Lotus Pro.

We remove limescale using a BubbleFlush machine that removes limescale by using ultrasonic vibrations. These vibrations generate small yet powerful bubbles in the water, which eventually implode with force, effectively removing limescale and stubborn dirt.

We use Soap2o. This is an environmentally friendly and cost-effective soap which has also helped us to reduce our single use plastic. Soap2o use no plastic in their packing.

We use Lucart EcoNatural paper and dispensers. EcoNatural is the innovative paper and dispenser system that gives new life to beverage cartons. Thanks to an innovative technology, Lucart separates the components of beverage cartons: from cellulose fibres it creates Fiberpack®, with which it produces paper, and from aluminium and polyethylene it produces Al.Pe.®, the new raw material used for making dispensers.

The next innovation we are considering for Housekeeping is the Tersano IClean FLO, which can be fitted to washing machines therefore eliminating washing detergents.