Closing the Loop at UWE Bristol: From Kitchen Scraps to Living Soil

When food waste disappears, so does responsibility.

At Generation Soil, we work on the principle that food waste should never be anonymous. Where it goes, how it’s treated, and what it becomes all matter. That’s why our collaboration with UWE Bristol’s Wild Kitchen feels like more than a partnership. It’s a practical demonstration of what it looks like when food, soil, and people are kept in relationship.

Together with the UWE Hospitality Team and Sustainability Team, we’re closing a loop that usually stays open. Food prepared and eaten on campus is now being composted locally and returned to the university’s Community Garden as living, microbially active compost. Not exported. Not abstracted. Returned.

Composting as a soil practice, not a disposal route

Food waste is often framed as a logistics problem. How quickly can it be removed? How efficiently can it be processed?

Our work starts from a different question. What happens when food waste stays close enough to be seen, smelt, and understood?

At Wild Kitchen, food scraps are collected and treated through bokashi fermentation. This is a low-energy, microbe-led process that stabilises food waste while preserving nutrients and biological value. Fermentation slows things down. It allows decomposition to begin before the material reaches a compost heap.

Once fermented, the material is transformed into living compost. This is not a neutral product. It’s biologically active, rich in bacteria and fungi, and designed to support soil structure and function rather than simply act as a growing medium.

That compost is then returned to UWE Bristol’s Community Garden, where it feeds soil that grows food, supports biodiversity, and offers students and staff a place to learn by doing.

Why locality matters

Over six months, Wild Kitchen generates around 600 kg of food waste. In many systems, that material would be transported out of the city and processed at scale, its transformation largely invisible.

Here, it stays local. That matters.

Keeping composting close changes the relationship people have with waste. Smell becomes information rather than something to fear. Compost becomes familiar rather than mysterious. Participation replaces guilt.

Local composting makes cycles legible. It allows people to trace a line from plate to soil, and back again.

A campus as a living system

UWE Bristol’s Community Garden isn’t just a destination for compost. It’s an educational space, a social space, and an ecological one.

Returning compost to the garden means that students and staff can see and feel what regeneration looks like in practice. Soil changes over time. Structure improves. Life returns. These are slow processes, but they’re visible when you know what to look for.

This is where composting moves beyond waste management and becomes a soil practice. One that supports learning, care, and long-term thinking.

Research, practice, and participation

Generation Soil was founded through research, but it exists through practice. Our work sits at the intersection of soil science, community participation, and food systems education.

This collaboration reflects that approach. It brings together operational teams, sustainability staff, students, and researchers around a shared material process. Composting becomes a point of connection rather than a back-of-house function.

For us, that’s the real impact. Not just the litres of compost produced, but the relationships formed around it.

Looking ahead

This partnership is rooted in place, but its implications travel further. Universities generate significant volumes of food waste. They also hold knowledge, land, and communities. When those elements are connected, campuses can function as living laboratories for regenerative practice.

We’re proud to be working with UWE Bristol to demonstrate what’s possible when food waste is treated not as an end point, but as the beginning of a new cycle.

If you’re interested in keeping food waste local, learning more about community composting, or exploring how soil regeneration can be embedded into everyday systems, we’d love to hear from you.

Because regeneration doesn’t happen at scale first.

It happens in relationship.