London, United Kingdom — Members of the U.K.'s Food and Drink Federation (FDF) are well on their way to cutting their carbon emissions, waste, packaging and more. The group has laid out the achievements of its member companies in a progress report on its environmental goals.
The FDF's commitments, laid out in its Five-fold Environmental Ambition, started over two years ago in October 2007. The companies in the FDF plan to:
1. Reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 20 percent by 2010 and by 30 percent by 2020, compared to 1990.
2. Send zero food and packaging waste to landfill starting in 2015.
3. Make significant reduction in the levels of packaging that ends up in households through supporting Waste and Resources Action Programme's (WRAP) Courtauld Commitment.
4. Add environmental standards to food transport practices and reduce the food chain's environmental and social impacts by 20 percent, compared to 2002.
5. Make significant reductions in water use and contributes to an industry-wide goal to reduce water use by 20 percent by 2020, compared to 2007.
In the last two years, FDF's member companies have make continued progress on all fronts.
On climate, the companies reduced CO2 emissions by 19 percent by the end of 2008, compared to 1990. That represents almost 1 million tonnes of CO2 reduced in the last two decades. The FDF also developed a web-based toolkit with resources and best practices information for companies to learn from, launched a newsletter to give companies information on reducing emissions and continued working with the Carbon Trust to set up programs - the two newest ones cover sugar confectionery manufacturing and industrial bread baking - that help reduce emissions.
To achieve zero waste, the FDF started working with WRAP to reviews sites across the U.K. and identify best practices. Site reviews have been made at 13 companies' sites, looking at waste that's produced and how to optimize primary, secondary and tertiary packaging. Once the FDF completes case studies of best practices, it will share them with member companies.
The FDF has also been steering companies to a web tool by the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme that helps companies looking for composting and anaerobic digestion companies, as well as assisting FareShare, a national food charity that distributes surplus food that would otherwise be tossed in the trash, in creating five additional partnerships with companies in 2008.
On packaging, 23 FDF companies have signed to the Courtauld Commitment, an agreement that includes creating absolute reductions in packaging waste by 2010, and 15 FDF companies have signed up to a new, easy-to-understand recycling label program in the U.K.
Forty-five FDF companies have signed up to FDF's Checklist and Clause for Greener Food Transport, which covers 10 best practices like maximizing loads in vehicles, driver training and vehicle maintenance. Companies can also add the principles in the checklist to contacts with third-party haulers.
As for water, 36 FDF companies collectively reduced their total water use, excluding water embedded in products, 1.7 percent in 2008 and decreased the amount of water used per tonne of product in 2008 by 1.4 percent.
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