Celebrating Five Years of UK Leadership in Reducing the Environmental Impacts of Food Production
The Food and Drink Federation (FDF), representing the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, is celebrating five years of success in reducing the environmental impacts of food production, while also increasing production to meet growing demand, at home and in export markets.
Launched in 2007, the FDF’s Five-fold Environmental Ambition sets a range of targets for cutting CO2 emissions, promoting more efficient use of water, reducing packaging and transport and eliminating food waste to landfill. More recently, the Ambition has been expanded to look at impacts across the whole food chain.
The fifth Five-fold annual Progress Report, just published, shows continuous improvement across the industry, clearly demonstrating the business case for sustainability, even in difficult economic circumstances.
Within the scope of the Five-fold Environmental Ambition, as established in 2007, FDF members have contributed to:
* Removing the equivalent annual emissions of 168,000 new cars on the road
* Preventing over 34,000,000 wheelie bins worth of supply chain food and packaging waste
* Averting the emissions equivalent to heating over 80,000 homes by reducing the carbon impact of packaging
* Saving 2,400 Olympic-size swimming pools worth of water
* Reducing road miles equivalent to travelling to the moon and back over 400 times.
Over the past year, FDF has continued to extend the reach of the Five-fold Environmental Ambition beyond the factory gates and into the supply chain. One key output has been the publication of a new guidance entitled “Sustainable Sourcing: Five Steps towards Managing Supply Chain Risk”. This simple step by step guide is designed to help companies large and small identify and manage supply chain risks as part of an integrated approach to sustainable sourcing.
Andrew Kuyk, FDF’s Director of Sustainability says: “FDF’s Five-fold Environmental Ambition has come a long way in the last five years. Not only has it demonstrated that good environmental practice makes good business sense, but it has also shown the value of voluntary and collaborative action across the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, contributing to the sustainable growth which is essential for economic recovery, as well as future food security in the face of a range of risks including climate change.”
