UK food and drink manufacturers are today setting out their ambition to play a positive role in improving the sustainability of the overall supply chain
Members of the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) have made considerable progress to date under the auspices of the trade association’s Five-fold Environmental Ambition, launched in 2007. Recent highlights include reducing their carbon emissions by 21% since 1990; saving more than two million cubic metres of water in 2009; and cutting the food and packaging waste sent to landfill to just 9%.
The original targets within the Five-fold Environmental Ambition have been updated and more challenging commitments have been introduced to ensure that the UK’s largest manufacturing sector continues to make a real difference across key areas of carbon reduction, waste to landfill, packaging reduction, water efficiency and transport miles.
At the same time, FDF is today launching a new set of five principles that reflect the broader sustainability challenges and will guide its future work to reduce the sector’s impacts across the supply chain.
Andrew Kuyk, FDF’s Director of Sustainability, said: “This report marks an important step-change for our Five-fold Environmental Ambition. Working with a wide range of stakeholders, we have reviewed our original commitments and challenged ourselves to go further, ensuring we remain at the leading edge of developments. We believe that a combination of new targets and our new sustainability principles will help us to take our Five-fold Environmental Ambition to the next level.”
Jim Paice, Minister for Agriculture and Food said: “A thriving food and drink industry is an important part of the UK economy and we must ensure that it is economically and environmentally sustainable. I’m pleased to see the FDF are making commitments to bigger challenges and I look forward to supporting the industry in achieving them.”
1. The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) is the voice of the food and drink manufacturing industry – the UK’s largest manufacturing sector.
2. Download the full 2010 Five-fold Environmental Ambition report (pdf, 96kb)
3. The five new-look commitments:
- Raising our 2020 CO2 reduction target from 30% to 35% (ahead of any other sector and in excess of Government’s interim carbon budget).
- Accelerating progress to our 2015 zero landfill waste target and contributing for the first time to a supply chain waste prevention target.
- Taking WRAP’s Courtauld 2 Commitment as the basis of our packaging target with a new aim to engage with consumers.
- Continuing to embed environmental standards through our ‘fewer and friendlier’ transport commitment and contributing for the first time to IGD’s Sustainable Distribution initiative.
- Building on the success of the Federation House Commitment on water efficiency to develop guidance on water use and management in the supply chain.
4. The new sustainability principles:
- Our role as food and drink manufacturers is to supply consumers with safe, nutritious, appetising and affordable food and to help them make sustainable choices which will secure these benefits for the future.
- We will lead by example, building on the success of FDF’s Five-fold Environmental Ambition to extend our influence across the supply chain as part of a longer term food strategy.
- We will work with our suppliers, customers, employees, policy makers and other stakeholders to develop the necessary information, skills and business environment to deliver continuous improvement in the use of energy, water and other natural resources to help address the pressing global issues of climate change and loss of biodiversity.
- We will encourage the development of life-cycle thinking throughout the supply chain and try to remove systemic barriers to improving resource efficiency, from the sourcing of raw materials to the disposal of post-consumer waste.
- We will promote innovation and technology to reduce waste and extract maximum value from the resources we use and to help consumers get the most from our products.