Who ate all the pies? Green Star Award for NHS Grampian’s cooks

NHS Grampian’s catering team has been recognised with a Green Star Award for their work tackling food waste. As well as making fresh pies daily using surplus ingredients from the day before, they closely monitor food production, waste and popularity, and make seasonal changes to the menu, to try to make sure as little as possible is thrown away.

As the team celebrates British Pie Week and a year since the pies were first introduced, Catering Manager Stuart Donald explained what gave the team an eye for pies.

“Grab and go items are popular lunchtime options wherever you go so we decided to try our hands at making pies. We make them fresh each day, so they look, smell and taste really good, and have been on-demand since we introduced them last year.

“As we’re using excess ingredients from the previous day, the fillings change so it helps keep people’s interest. Waste reduction has always been a big part of what we do and it’s fantastic the team is being recognised for their commitment to sustainable practices,” he said.

NHS Grampian’s catering team serves more than two million meals to patients every year as well as more than 300,000 meals in their cafes for staff and visitors. They use more than 150 tonnes of tatties – greater than the weight of the Statue of Liberty – and supply more than 1.2 million slices of toast!

Pie making isn’t the only successful waste reduction campaign the team has championed. Noting there was a lot of food waste from wards making too much toast at breakfast times, they introduced a ward toast initiative and massively reduced what was being thrown in the bin by working closely with domestic colleagues.

Stuart added: “Our ward toast campaign reduced the number of slices being thrown away by almost two thirds! That in itself saved around £2,000 per year as well as all the carbon savings.”

They’ve also changed some items that were previously bought in, including scones, to bake them in-house. This helps reduce their carbon footprint by limiting what’s coming through the supply chain and all the associated packaging.

Robert Hobkirk, Head of Sustainability Compliance and Risk for NHS Grampian, presented the catering team with their award. He commented: “Stuart and his team are setting a leading example of how we can all make changes for the benefit for our health and our pockets.

“Our organisational commitment to sustainability is about working together to reduce waste, which means less emissions, which means better air quality and better health. Less plastic packaging means less chances of this ending up in our oceans and less microplastics in our water supply and our food chain. The catering team’s work is commendable and captures the can-do approach we would like to see more people adopt, both in their work and day-to-day lives.”

NHS Grampian’s Green Star Awards were introduced last year to help recognise the fantastic work colleagues are doing to take action on climate change. Find out more at www.nhsgrampian.org/sustainability 

---