This case study demonstrates the environmental and economic impact of applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) to food waste management in tortilla production at Cool Chile Co., a London-based Mexican food manufacturing company. The project evaluated food waste generation across the tortilla production process and compared five food waste management strategies: anaerobic digestion (AD), animal feed, beer production, reworking waste within production, and upgrading the tortilla machine.

The study identified that the cooling and forming stages generated the highest levels of food waste, accounting for nearly 90% of the total waste. Environmental analysis showed that reworking waste within the production process was the most sustainable solution, with significant reductions across 17 of 18 environmental impact categories. Economic analysis further confirmed that reworking waste was the most financially viable strategy, reducing net production costs to GBP 4.96/ kg of tortilla compared to GBP 5.09/ kg in the reference scenario.

As a direct result of this work, the company gained a clear operational strategy to reduce waste at source, improve production efficiency, reduce disposal costs, and improve profitability. The findings supported process optimisation in the cooling and forming stages, improved machine performance, reduced environmental burden, and strengthened the company’s progress toward circular economy practices and net-zero food production goals.

Food and drink is the second largest manufacturing sector in the West London economy, driven by the region’s proximity to London and Heathrow. Of course, within the region sits the Park Royal Industrial Estate, which hosts over 500 food and drink businesses. These businesses produce around 30% of London’s food, with an estimated £8bn annual economic contribution. It is not for nothing that Park Royal is known as “London’s Kitchen”.

Food infrastructure like Park Royal is of the same strategic importance as energy or transport infrastructure – cities, London, cannot function without it. Park Royal is the UK’s largest industrial estate, providing employment for over 40,000 local people, most from surrounding boroughs. This makes it a place-based economic asset that should be at the centre of regional economic and innovation planning, not a peripheral logistics zone.

Food & drink manufacturing matters now more than ever. The food system is energy intensive, waste heavy, and under pressure from rising costs, regulation, and labour constraints.

At Brunel University of London, we are trying to realise some of these opportunities with the Park Royal Net Zero Food Systems project. Led by Brunel, with civic and sector partners, the project is explicitly focused on:

• Energy reduction
• Waste minimisation and valorisation
• Digitalisation and automation
• Low carbon production and logistics

The project frames net-zero as a way to reduce cost, improve resilience, and drive growth, not just cut emissions. We view net-zero as an industrial revolution: an industrial efficiency wave for food manufacturing, comparable to the automation of previous decades.

Beit El Zaytoun is a high‑occupancy restaurant operating in Park Royal from a well‑located, generously sized single‑storey premises refurbished for hospitality use, with mixed HVAC systems and long operating hours. The site consumes 413,895 kWh/year and emits ~75 tCO₂e, with gas supplying most energy (72%). Modelling indicates that fabric upgrades, LED lighting, ASHPs, and a modest PV array could reduce emissions by up to 24%, though overall performance is constrained by kitchen process loads, which make up 57% of total energy use, rising to 74% following building‑services improvements.

Heating electrification reduces gas use but increases electrical demand and faces practical challenges relating to grid capacity, external plant placement, and ventilation interactions. Fabric upgrades deliver incremental benefit, while on‑site PV potential (≈11 kWp) provides limited offsetting. Ultimately, decarbonisation is shaped more by the inherent energy intensity of catering operations than by building systems, limiting the impact of conventional retrofit measures.

Strategic Significance

Situated within the Park Royal industrial and food systems cluster, Beit El Zaytoun holds value beyond a single‑site retrofit. It serves as:

• A real‑world case study of the decarbonisation limits in food‑led hospitality
• A demonstrator for combined fabric, electrification, and renewables pathways
• A platform to trial next‑generation low‑carbon catering technologies
• A testbed for robust measurement and verification frameworks (TM54/IPMVP)

As such, the project addresses a broader systemic challenge: how to decarbonise energy‑intensive, process‑dominated commercial kitchens within the UK’s food supply chain.