Environmental Company Case Studies

FDF members are committed to making a significant contribution to improving the environment by targeting priorities where they can make the biggest difference.

Cutting CO2 Emissions Case Studies

FDF members are committed to making significant reductions in CO2emissions to help tackle climate change. Here are two examples of current best practice – showing what is possible by work which has been undertaken or is now underway in this area.

Tate & Lyle

Tate & Lyle is committed to making significant reductions in CO2 emissions to help tackle climate change. The company is investing in a new biomass boiler at the Thames Cane Sugar Refinery, its largest manufacturing facility in the UK. This will reduce the site's CO2 emissions from fossil fuels by about 120,000.

The renewable energy from the boiler will replace 70% of the present consumption of energy generated from fossil fuels at the site. This will enable a corresponding 70% reduction in CO2emissions from fossil fuels and reduced energy bills. Construction of the boiler will be completed by March 2009.

Tate & Lyle is also exploring other renewable energy options for the site, including installation of a wind turbine.

These developments build on Tate & Lyle's existing efforts to be more energy resource efficient. In 2000, the company made a commitment to reduce Group energy usage per unit of production by 3% per annum and publishes progress in its Annual Report.

Since 2003, the Thames site has achieved a 23% reduction in energy consumption per tonne of sugar produced. As a result, Tate & Lyle is currently a net-exporter of energy to the National Grid (averaging between 2 and 3MW year round). This export will be in the form of renewable energy once the biomass boiler comes into operation.

McCain Foods

Up to 70% of potato processing company, McCain Foods' annual electricity needs will soon be met from renewable energy sources at its factory just outside Peterborough. This will help tackle climate change by reducing the company's carbon dioxide emissions by 20,000 tonnes per year.

To achieve this significant environmental gain, McCain is investing £10m in new technology with a four to five year payback period.

Three new wind turbines at the company's Whittlesey plant will provide on average 60% of the electricity required to operate the plant over the year as a whole, rising to 100% in certain months. They are due to come into operation from winter 2007 and will be among the most powerful on-shore in the UK, generating 9MW of electricity between them per year.

McCain's investment plan also includes a new combined heat and power facility. It will run on biogas (methane) generated by a new on-site waste water treatment plant – a covered anaerobic digester lagoon the size of 2 football pitches.

This source of renewable energy will provide an additional 10% of the factory's annual electricity needs.

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Zero Waste to Landfill Case Studies

FDF members will seek to send zero food and packaging waste to landfill from 2015. Here are two examples of current best practice – showing what is possible by work which has been undertaken or is now underway in this area.

Nestlé UK

Nestlé UK reduced its landfilling of surplus food and its packaging by about 95% between 2005 and 2006, and its disposal costs by about 40% per pallet.

To prevent waste, Nestlé works alongside others with the charity FareShare to redistribute good quality edible food, through a community network to those most in need.

To take this concept further, Nestlé helped the charity develop FareShare 1st, a fully viable waste prevention and recovery option suitable for large companies, where surplus food is securely redistributed and the remaining waste is diverted from landfill. The charity benefits from the additional income it earns from the arrangement.

Nestlé provides surplus finished goods ranging from pasta and coffee to chocolate and water. This resulted in 176 tonnes less food and its packaging entering landfill in 2006 and 1,144 tonnes less CO2 being produced.

Overall, about 14% of pallets of surplus finished goods are redistributed and almost all of the balance is recycled to create soil substitutes and compost among other things.

Greencore

Convenience food manufacturer Greencore is seeking to send zero food and packaging waste to landfill.

Based on technology developed by Inetec, Greencore's food and packaging waste will be converted under a contract with that company into a solid, stable, biofuel. A new plant at Immingham is being built by Inetec for this purpose and is due to come into operation from mid to late 2008.

The technology will also separate glass jars and metal caps for recycling and produces no emissions to atmosphere.

Overall, the project will divert 180,000 tonnes of waste away from landfill each year.

In addition, the biofuel made from this 'waste' turned resource will be capable of producing 24MW of renewable electricity – enough to power 39,000 homes.

The plant will be the first network of such facilities designed to service all the UK.

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Minimising Packaging Case Studies

FDF members are committed to making significant reductions in the levels of packaging reaching households and to advising consumers on how best to recycle or otherwise recover used packaging. Here are two examples of current best practice – showing what is possible by work which has been undertaken or is now underway in this area.

United Biscuits

United Biscuits reduced the weight of packaging it uses, and hence the amount reaching consumers, by 6,800 tonnes per annum in 2006 compared with 2003 by adopting a reduce, recycle, reuse philosophy in line with the waste hierarchy. It is also starting to use simple symbols on its recyclable packaging to make it easy for consumers to recycle, reuse or compost waste packaging.

As a supporter of the Courtauld Commitment, United Biscuits works in partnership with the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to develop new and more effective wrapping for the biscuit and snack markets in which it operates.

The company's efforts to help consumers and others who are trying to recycle packaging waste have resulted in over 80% of all of its packaging by weight being readily suited to recycling. In addition, over 90% of the cardboard it uses is derived from recycled board which not only helps to reduce packaging waste but avoids the use of virgin materials.

Constantly monitoring and evaluating new and innovative developments in the packaging market is an important dimension to United Biscuits' approach. For example, the company is currently working with its snacks film provider to create a new film which is 17% lighter than the one currently used and has the potential to save about 700 tonnes of packaging reaching consumers each year.

Alara Wholefoods

Alara Wholefoods has made a 70% reduction in the level of packaging reaching households by launching its new organic muesli range in a paper bag instead of a bag-in-a-box. The paper bag is made of kraft paper lined with a plastic film. It weighs just 15.5 grams compared to the bag-in-a-box which weighed 48 grams.

Based on recent sales figures, Alara estimates that this initiative has prevented almost 7.2 tonnes of packaging reaching consumers over the past year.

The company estimates that it will save about £9,000 per year in packaging costs.

The bags will soon be made biodegradable too, following the replacement of the plastic liner with a bio-plastic and the introduction of biodegradable labels.

Advice will be provided to consumers on how to maximise the environmental benefits through composting.

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Reducing Water Use Case Studies

FDF members are committed to making significant reductions in water use to help reduce stress on the nation's water supplies. Here are two examples of current best practice – showing what is possible by work which has been undertaken or is now underway in this area.

Walkers

Walkers, the potato processing company, reduced its water consumption by around 50% at its Leicester sites in Bursom and Leycroft saving around 700 million litres per year.

Achieving this required the development of a comprehensive understanding of water use at each of the sites. Reflecting the philosophy that if you do not measure it you cannot manage it, Walkers installed around 30 water meters at the sites. This enabled the company to develop a two pronged strategy to drive down water usage.

First the company developed a range of engineering solutions. For example, recycling water from the starch recovery programme, for use in potato fluming and washing, enabled 400 million litres of water to be saved each year.

Second, it worked to change the attitude and behaviour of factory staff to make them passionate about water conservation. Water use is now measured and reported by shift to show variations in performance between each of the teams that work them. Leak busters and water champions are assigned to each shift. The best performing teams are rewarded and recognised by the company for their contribution towards sustainability.

Overall, the strategy has led to water consumption falling from 17.67 to 9.24 litres per kilogram of potatoes processed in Bursom and 13.65 to 6.38 litres per kilogram in Leycroft.

Cadbury Trebor Bassett

Cadbury Trebor Bassett is committed to reducing water use and is saving about 15% per year at its cocoa processing site at Chirk, North Wales, equivalent to approximately 17 million litres per annum.

The site uses water for a variety of reasons, including generating steam for process heat, running cooling towers and cleaning. As part of the site environmental agenda, Cadbury Trebor Bassett invested around £2m in an onsite wastewater treatment plant to clean up effluent arising from the manufacturing process.

Waste water from the factory is passed through a number of different treatment stages. The primary stages include removing suspended solid material by dissolved air flotation and using submerged biological filters to remove biodegradable material. The final stage involves using a combination of microfiltration and reverse osmosis membranes to turn the effluent into high quality clean water.

The quality of the treated water is such that the company is able to re-use it for certain 'grey water' applications (e.g. to feed boilers to raise steam) located outside of the main factory building away from all ingredients and product.

As a result of its investment, Cadbury Trebor Bassett has been able to reduce demand for water usage at the site by about 15% per year resulting in a saving in water costs of around £10,000 per annum.

To build on this success, the company is currently exploring other opportunities outside of the main factory building such as use in the site's cooling towers.

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Fewer Transport Miles Case Studies

FDF members are committed to embedding environmental standards into their transport practices, including their contracts with hauliers as they fall for renewal, to achieve fewer and friendlier food transport miles. Here are two examples of current best practice – showing what is possible by work which has been undertaken or is now underway in this area.

United Biscuits

United Biscuits (UB) is achieving fewer and friendlier food transport miles under its 'Green is Lean and Lean is Green' transport strategy.

The company has placed improved transport network design and vehicle utilisation, aided by satellite tracking systems and driver training, at its heart.

Backhauling by UB's fleet is another key facet, to ensure that vehicles are utilised on return legs to company sites. The company's efforts in this area have proved 100% successful and are expected to earn it net revenues of over £1m in 2008 - proving that 'green' really is 'lean'.

Overall, UB's strategy helped it to avoid 2.7m road miles (16%) in 2007 compared to 2005, reduce empty running of its vehicles from 21% to 15% and increase vehicle fill by an average of 11%.

Cumulatively, the strategy should save about 4,700 tonnes in CO2 emissions by the end of 2008, some of which (11%) will come from the company's adoption a 30% bio-diesel mix in its vehicles made from reusing waste oils from its manufacturing sites.

Tate & Lyle

Tate & Lyle is committed to achieving fewer and friendlier food transport miles and has moved quickly to embed FDF's environmental clause for greener food transport in its contract with its third party haulier managing its UK bulk distribution.

Tate & Lyle's transport strategy places priority on its haulier using vehicles which meet the latest EU engine standards and on the achievement of improved fuel efficiency.

In particular, the company aims to achieve a significant reduction in road miles by shifting its bulk sugar distribution between its Refinery in Silvertown East London and Glasgow from road to rail freight.

Tate & Lyle expects this change, begun in April 2008, to save about 2,500 long distance lorry movements per year and over 1.6m road miles per year.

To improve the model further, Tate & Lyle is working with the rail provider to establish an extended rail service from July 2008 running from Barking. This location is preferable as it is only six miles from the Thames Cane Sugar Refinery and avoids the need to send containers by road to Daventry, which acts as the existing railhead to support the operation.

When up and running the extended rail service is expected to increase the company's road to rail savings to 2.1m road miles per year.

Cadbury

Cadbury is achieving fewer and friendlier food transport miles following a review of its UK food distribution to embed environmental best practice and reduce operating costs.

Five years ago Cadbury's UK food distribution was based upon 15 warehouses spread across the UK and an in-house fleet of over 60 vehicles covering 90% of their radial deliveries, backed up by contracts with 63 third-party hauliers - who handled the company's full load transport movements.

Today all of the company's food distribution is carried out by just 5 hand picked third party hauliers and storage principally confined to three strategically placed warehouses.

By outsourcing all of its haulage and rationalising its warehousing, Cadbury's expects to reduce distribution movements for its products to about 65,000 in 2008 - compared to 142,000 in 2002 - and avoid 4.7m road miles.

In addition, the company will save 7,500 tonnes of CO2, just under half of which comes from reduced lorry movements between its warehouses. It will also save 15% on its haulage costs.

General Mills

General Mills' strategy is to transport products coming from its two manufacturing plants in Southern France and Northern Spain to the UK as much as possible by sea. Defra research published in 2005 shows sea freight is amongst the most efficient modes of transport in terms of its environmental and social impacts.

By 2007, 80% of General Mill's shipments to the UK were by sea. This has helped to avoid 2,700 lorry movements in 2007 and over 2m road miles.

When goods are distributed by road, including around the UK, General Mills maximises vehicle fill by stacking all light products as high as possible and only reducing the pallet height at the last stage of the journey in line with customer specifications. By maximising vehicle fill, the company is saving about 270 vehicle movements per year and about 230,000 road miles.

General Mills also seeks to use only those third party hauliers and logistics experts who can consolidate deliveries across a number of manufacturers to increase vehicle utilisation, reduce mileage per delivery and reduce empty running. General Mills also takes a pro-active approach with retailers in order to develop consolidated multi-supplier deliveries.

McCains

Over the last 7 years McCain Foods has actively sought ways to increase the efficiency of its distribution operations through carefully planned journey scheduling.

To reduce the number of journeys from farm to factory, McCain actively encourages its network of around 300 potato growers across the UK to form collaborative groups where they can benefit from shared transport and other resource efficiencies.

To improve the efficiency of deliveries to McCain's Whittlesey plant, haulage has been consolidated under a single third party contract. Similarly, distribution of finished product to external depots and increasingly, direct to store, is now managed by only two third party hauliers.

McCain's main contractors use double deck trucks which hold up to 41 pallets, rather than the normal 26, and significantly reduce the number of journeys made each year.

In the five years to 2006 McCain's approach has helped to avoid over 2,000 vehicle movements per year, about 15% to 20% of the total number of vehicle movements used to distribute the company's products.

Mars UK

Mars UK is achieving significantly fewer and friendlier transport miles by maximising load fill of delivery trucks, minimising journey distances, working with hauliers to implement environmental best practice and using rail rather than road wherever possible.

Mars UK's petfood, snackfood and mainmeal products each require different strategies to minimise food transport miles. For example, imports are a significant characteristic of the petfood business. By shifting production from continental Europe to facilities within the UK, the company will reduce its food import food miles by 17% by 2008.

Warehousing is being reorganised from the beginning of 2008 to take a mix of products. This will enable consolidated deliveries of petfood, snackfood and mainmeal products thereby improving truck fill. This will save over 500,000 food miles per year.

On a smaller scale, Mars UK uses a dedicated rail service for some of its products. This mode of transport produces only 10% of the greenhouse gases of transporting the same load a similar distance by lorry.

Overall, Mars UK's greener transport commitment will save 606,000 food transport miles per year – and over 25,000 tonnes of CO2 within the first 5 years starting from 2006.

Danone Waters UK

Danone Waters UK is embedding environmental standards at the heart of its food distribution network and is expected to achieve up to a 14% reduction in CO2 emissions over three years ending winter 2008.

Danone Waters UK is the sole distributor of mineral water and other products made by its parent company, Danone Eaux France. The UK company established a network profile for its transport routes between its factories and warehouses; and between its warehouses and customers. This included calculating the CO2emissions in respect of both legs. This analysis informed the company's policy on fewer and friendlier food transport miles.

'Modal Shift' is central to Danone's strategy – moving as much freight as possible away from roads onto rail and water, given their relative environmental advantages. To optimise the potential rail and sea advantages, Danone opened a strategically placed warehouse in Zeebrugge. In addition, it introduced better stock control management to minimise the use of road freight. It is also using more UK ports than before in order to land goods at the point closest to its customers nationwide.

Danone Waters UK estimates that by the end of 2008 rail use will make up 83% of its food transport miles between factories and warehouses; and 52% for the next leg between its warehouses and customers. This is up from 24% and 30% respectively compared to 2005.

The information in this section is taken from a document entitled The Environment: Making a real difference (pdf, 1.4Mb) published by FDF in October 2007 .

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Last reviewed: 15 Jul 2008