St Austell Brewery cuts food waste across pub estate
St Austell Brewery has reported a significant reduction in food waste across its managed pub estate...
Stonegate Group has shown major progress across its circular economy and sustainability programme, revealing significant reductions in waste, carbon‑intensive packaging and resource consumption across its 4,000‑site estate.
The findings form part of the Group’s latest ‘Pouring with Purpose’ reporting and highlight the scale at which Stonegate is delivering low‑impact operational changes across the UK pub and bar sector.
Stonegate has accelerated its move towards circular, lower‑impact packaging, replacing traditional single‑use formats with reusable and low‑carbon alternatives across its estate. A growing partnership with suppliers, including the successful trial of refillable spirits vessels, has already taken over 10,000 bottles out of circulation at Slug & Lettuce sites alone.
At the same time, the expansion of Stonegate’s glass re‑use scheme now returns bottles from more than 100 venues, ensuring they are cleaned and reused rather than recycled. This sits alongside a major shift toward sleek can formats, which offer a smaller carbon footprint across production and distribution and are now used across several of the Group’s most popular soft drinks and RTDs.
As the UK’s largest pub company, Stonegate recognises the responsibility, and the opportunity, to lead the sector in embedding more sustainable ways of operating.
Estate‑wide optimisation and smart controls have contributed to a double‑digit fall in energy use, while long‑term water stewardship, including more than 1,000 site audits, has helped the business save the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pints of water since FY21.
Stonegate now operates with zero waste to landfill, supported by extensive recycling streams and biodiesel conversion programmes that transform almost 720,000 litres of used cooking oil each year into renewable fuel.
These improvements reflect Stonegate’s commitment to advancing circular practices at scale and are underpinned by the Group’s first Energy Policy, designed to hard‑wire future reductions and set a benchmark for sustainability across the industry.
David McDowall, CEO at Stonegate Group, said: “I’m really pleased with the progress we are making on our sustainability journey Pubs, Bars and Venues are about so much more than just serving drinks – they’re about people, community, and making a real difference. As we continue with our wider transformation programme, we remain committed to make purposeful decisions that have a positive impact, and this is an example of just that – working in partnership with our suppliers to make genuine progress whilst operating more efficiently”.
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