Tumblebug announces that Abingdon School, a leading independent day and boarding school for boys, has chosen an Ecobot food waste dryer to manage food waste on-site rather than paying for it to be sent to landfill or incineration. 

Founded over 750 years ago, the school is situated in 35 acres of beautiful grounds in the centre of Abingdon, just south of Oxford, and teaches around 1,250 students in total. Abingdon School enjoys the very best in academic standards, music, sport and the arts in a caring and supportive environment where students are motivated to succeed.

“Sustainability is central to so much of what we do at Abingdon,” comments Head of School, Michael Windsor. “We know that we have a responsibility to educate our young people and to lead by example. Much of our focus in recent times has been to reduce the amount of food waste we produce and, whilst we will continue to concentrate on this, being able to put the waste produced to good, practical use is not only of benefit to our school from a management perspective but also from an environmental perspective too.”

The school’s Environmental Committee is a cross-section of support and academic staff from different departments including estates, grounds, transport, catering and teaching staff. The Student Eco Committee feeds ideas into the Environmental Committee, which means students are very much involved in the schools’ sustainability planning.

The school’s catering team prepares nearly 1,500 meals every day during the week and generates nearly 100Kg of food waste every day. The conventional approach to disposing of food waste is for the catering staff to deposit waste in 20 wheelie bins near the kitchens, which are then collected twice a week by a waste management company.