Hospitality Waste Incinerators
Hotel, restaurant and venue residual once food waste and recyclables are separately collected.
Hotels, restaurants and venues produce residual waste at the worst possible times: late, in bulk, and into a bin store somebody has to walk past. Food waste is collected separately and belongs in anaerobic digestion. What is left — packaging, service items, soft furnishings — is what a unit is for.
Four Models,
One Solution
The entry point to the LitBurn range. A 3.3 m³ primary chamber and three burners give continuous 125 kg/h destruction in a footprint that fits a standard yard bay, which makes it the usual choice for a single-site operator replacing skip hire rather than a multi-site waste contract.
The most specified unit in the range. Chamber volume rises to 5.5 m³ for 250 kg/h continuous throughput while the external width grows by only 230 mm over the LBI-125, so sites that outgrow the smallest unit rarely have to rework the slab or the building line.
A 9.6 m³ chamber — nearly double the LBI-250 — for medium-scale industrial waste destruction. At this size most operators pair the unit with heat recovery, because the thermal output during a full shift is large enough to displace a dedicated water heater.
The largest LitBurn: a 16.2 m³ chamber running 500 kg/h continuously. Specified where waste arrives faster than a batch unit can clear it — large manufacturing sites, industrial estates, and operators consolidating several smaller waste contracts onto one machine.
Which Model
Fits Your Volume
Pick a model to see what it clears in a day of hospitality & catering waste.
A single hotel, a remote lodge or a venue clearing up to three tonnes a week in three shifts.
Food waste is separately collected, always
Separate food waste collection is a legal duty for hospitality businesses, and food is animal by-product material with treatment routes above disposal. No permit makes putting it in a residual charge the right answer.
20 03 01 and 15 01 on the permit
Hospitality residual codes as mixed municipal-type waste with packaging under 15 01. Where soft furnishings and bulky items are in scope, 20 03 07 belongs in the application as well.
Kitchen pressurised items are a real risk
Cream chargers, butane cartridges and cleaning aerosols arrive in hospitality residual constantly. Screening them is a written step, and it is the one that prevents the incident this stream is most likely to produce.
International catering waste is a different regime
Category 1 catering waste from international transport requires approved destruction. If a site handles it — an airport hotel, a port operation — it is permitted and approved separately, never absorbed into the residual stream.
Why Burn It
On Site
4 things change on the day this stream stops leaving the site.
Bin stores are the smallest room in the building
Hospitality residual is bulky and continuous, and the store is sized for a collection frequency somebody else controls. Removing most of the mass locally is the only way to change that without moving a wall.
Late-night arisings stop waiting for morning
Venues and restaurants produce most of their residual waste after the last collection of the day. On-site destruction means it does not sit through the night in a store next to a guest entrance.
Remote and island sites have no round
A country house hotel, an island venue or a highland lodge may be at the end of a long, expensive and unreliable collection route. That is where the case stops being arithmetic and becomes practical.
Soft furnishings and linen leave properly
End-of-life mattresses, upholstery, linen and towels are bulky, unwanted by reuse routes once stained or fire-damaged, and they sit in yards for weeks. They can be cleared the day they are condemned.
Dual-chamber unit, continuous duty
Primary chamber running 850–1,200°C with a secondary holding flue gas above 850°C for two seconds. Rated to run for a shift, because mixed waste arrives at the rate a site produces it rather than in charges somebody can schedule.
Front dual-door loading
Charged through a front dual door at floor level, so 1,100-litre bins, cages and wheeled containers are fed at the height they are already moved at. No tipping platform, no hoist, no lifting sacks over a rim.
What Ships
With The Unit
Identical whichever stream it is specified for. The operating procedure changes; the machine does not.
Dual-chamber unit, continuous duty
Primary chamber running 850–1,200°C with a secondary holding flue gas above 850°C for two seconds. Rated to run for a shift, because mixed waste arrives at the rate a site produces it rather than in charges somebody can schedule.
Front dual-door loading
Charged through a front dual door at floor level, so 1,100-litre bins, cages and wheeled containers are fed at the height they are already moved at. No tipping platform, no hoist, no lifting sacks over a rim.
IP6X control panel with cycle logging
PLC control with chamber thermocouples, interlocked charge door and a time-stamped temperature record per run. On a residual stream the log is what a permit compliance visit reads, and what a duty-of-care question is answered from.
Three-burner set and fuel train
Configured for natural gas, LPG, diesel, biofuel or hydrogen. Mixed municipal and commercial waste is wetter and more variable than an industrial stream, so burner support matters more here than on a polymer charge.
Coretex refractory lining
Monolithic castable lining rated for the full temperature range, replaceable in service. Mixed waste swings in calorific value between one bin and the next, and the lining is specified for that cycling rather than for a steady feed.
Stack, dispersion data and commissioning
Stack to the height your site-specific dispersion assessment calls for, the emissions data pack the permit application references, on-site commissioning, a witnessed first run and operator training for depot or site staff.
How One Burn Runs,
Start To Finish
One run is one countable event, reconciled against a manifest and evidenced by a time-stamped temperature log.
One Cycle,
Start To Finish
Adds 20 03 01 and 15 01 to the permit, and states one exclusion harder than any other child: food and catering waste is separately collected animal by-product material and does not go in the charge.
Food waste goes to its own collection for anaerobic digestion or composting; dry recyclables go to theirs. That separation is a legal duty and it defines what may reach the charge door.
Batteries, vapes, aerosols, gas cartridges from kitchens and small electricals are pulled at the bin store. Kitchen and bar areas produce more pressurised items than most commercial settings.
Wheeled containers and cages go through the front dual door at floor level while the unit runs. Guest-room and housekeeping waste arrives already bagged and is charged as it is.
Primary combustion with two-second secondary retention above 850°C, or 1,100°C where packaging and coated service items push the charge past 1% halogenated organic content.
Residue is 3–5% of input mass, with an inert fraction from mattress springs and fittings where soft furnishings were in the run. The log closes the site's waste record.
What You Can Burn —
And What You Can't
One run takes the whole stream without pre-sorting. What must never enter it is a short, hard list.
Yes: accepted in a run
No pre-sorting between these
- Guest-room and housekeeping residualBagged room waste, bathroom waste and housekeeping arisings once recyclables have been taken out at the trolley.
- Contaminated and non-recyclable packagingFilms, laminates, coated board and transit packaging contaminated in service or storage, which recycling will not take.
- Single-use service itemsCoated cups, lids, wrappers, sachets and disposable service items that are neither recyclable nor compostable in practice.
- End-of-life soft furnishingsMattresses, upholstery, cushions and fittings withdrawn from rooms; springs and frames come out inert with the ash.
- Linen and textiles beyond launderingStained, damaged or fire-condemned linen, towels and uniform that reuse and rag routes will not accept.
- Event and function residualMixed residual from functions, conferences and events where segregation at source was never realistic on the night.
No: never charged
Not a permit question — these stay out
- Food and kitchen catering wasteSeparately collected animal by-product material with treatment routes above disposal. It is the defining exclusion of this stream, not a nuance.
- Waste cooking oilA recoverable liquid with a real market, and a liquid this class of unit does not take in any case. It goes to its own collection.
- Gas cartridges, aerosols and cylindersKitchens and bars produce more of these than most settings — cream chargers, butane cartridges, cleaning aerosols. All are sealed vessels under heat.
- International catering wasteCategory 1 material from international transport with a mandatory destruction route and its own approval requirement. Specified on its own page rather than mixed in here.
Can you legally burn hospitality & catering waste on site?
Technically, yes: the chamber destroys almost everything on the accepted list at 850–1,200°C, and capability is rarely the constraint. Legally is a separate question. What your site is allowed to burn is set by your environmental permit from the Environment Agency, SEPA or NIEA and the waste codes written into it. The never-charged list is different again: those materials are out of scope for the unit or governed by a direction, and no permit wording brings them back in. Send us the codes you hold, or the ones you expect to apply for, and we will tell you which of this list they cover before anything is specified.
Send us your waste codesWhat does a hotel group's 3 tonnes a week take?
Arithmetic on published model figures, not a customer reference. Your numbers go through the same steps.
How This
Was Worked Out
3,000 kg a week against the LBI-125's 125 kg/h = 24 hours, or three shifts, leaving 90–150 kg of ash and a bin store that holds a day rather than a week. Hospitality residual is bulky and uncompacted. Three tonnes is a lot of containers, so count them against the 3.3 m³ chamber before assuming the smallest unit is enough.
90–150 kg a week
None — separately collected
3.3 m³
2.5 t
Send your daily or weekly arisings and we will confirm the model, the run time and the permit route.
Related Products
& Services
Complementary equipment and engineering services for your process.
Hospitality & catering waste Questions
Answered against the published figures for the models specified for this stream, not a generic range sheet.
Hospitality residual waste is the mixed stream a hotel, restaurant, pub, venue or leisure site produces once food waste and dry recyclables are collected separately: contaminated packaging, single-use service items, guest-room waste, end-of-life soft furnishings, linen beyond laundering, and the general refuse of running a building open to the public. Food waste is the boundary that defines this page. It is separately collected under the workplace rules, it is animal by-product material, and it has treatment routes — anaerobic digestion and composting — that rank above disposal. A hospitality unit is specified on the basis that food is out of the stream, not on a hope that some of it might be. That leaves a genuinely awkward residual fraction. Hospitality waste is bulky, wet at the edges and produced around the clock, and bin stores in city-centre or remote hotels are usually the smallest space in the building. Volume, not tonnage, is what makes the operation painful and what a unit actually fixes. One case sits outside all of this. Catering waste from international transport is Category 1 animal by-product and must be destroyed under approved arrangements — that is a legal requirement rather than a cost decision, and it is specified separately on the international catering waste page.
3,000 kg a week against the LBI-125's 125 kg/h = 24 hours, or three shifts, leaving 90–150 kg of ash and a bin store that holds a day rather than a week. Hospitality residual is bulky and uncompacted. Three tonnes is a lot of containers, so count them against the 3.3 m³ chamber before assuming the smallest unit is enough.
No. Food waste is separately collected by law, it is animal by-product material, and anaerobic digestion and composting rank above disposal for it. A hospitality unit is sized and permitted on the basis that food is out of the stream — including in the arithmetic, because food is heavy.
It goes to its own collection. Used cooking oil has a genuine recovery market and it is a liquid, which this class of unit does not take in any case. Two separate reasons pointing the same way.
It depends far more on location than on size. A city-centre hotel on a daily round is an arithmetic question; a remote lodge or island venue at the end of an expensive, unreliable route is usually a practical one. Three tonnes a week is three shifts on the smallest unit.
Yes, where reuse has been ruled out — reduced enough to charge, with springs and frames leaving inert in the ash. Soft furnishings are typically the fraction that occupies the most yard space for the least tonnage, so clearing them locally is worth more than the weight suggests.
They are removed before charging. Cream chargers, butane cartridges and aerosols are sealed vessels under heat and hospitality produces more of them than almost any other commercial setting. Screening at the bin store is the written control.
If it handles catering waste from international transport, yes — that material is Category 1 and requires approved destruction under its own arrangements. It is covered on the international catering waste page and it is never absorbed into an ordinary hospitality residual stream.
Ready to
Incinerate?
Send the stream, the volume and the site constraints. We will confirm the model, the permit route, and what the specification has to say to satisfy the regulator.
- Bin stores are the smallest room in the building
- Late-night arisings stop waiting for morning
- Remote and island sites have no round
- Soft furnishings and linen leave properly