Annual Review 2009: Leading from the front

Industry in action

The environment: continued leadership

FDF's Five-fold Environmental Ambition shows what industry can do to meet the challenges of sustainable production while delivering safe, affordable and nutritious food to consumers. Our second annual Progress Report, published in December 2009, shows that members are firmly on target with our carbon ambition; are fully engaged on food and packaging waste; and are making real advances in respect of water and transport.

Minister for Food, Farming & the Environment Jim Fitzpatrick praises industry's environmental progress

But expectations continue to evolve. WRAP – the Government body responsible for waste and packaging – is in the process of assuming a wider remit for environmental impacts throughout the supply chain and is keen to move from securing weight-based reductions in packaging to carbon emission reductions for products themselves.

This was reflected in discussions around successor arrangements to the current Courtauld Commitment, which underpins our efforts in this area. FDF and member companies played an active role in helping to shape the new proposals.

WRAP will in future also be responsible for the Federation House Commitment, currently owned by Envirowise, which underpins our water reduction target. At the same time there is growing recognition of the significance of water use in both primary production and the home, all of which contributes to the overall footprint of the product. FDF is actively participating in these wider debates to feed into our planned review of the Five-fold Environmental Ambition during 2010.

That review process will also have to take account of a range of Government initiatives announced during 2009, in particular the major Budget announcements on new carbon reduction targets; incentives for energy efficiency; and support for new green technologies. A suite of strategy documents followed in the summer centred around a key policy paper entitled 'Transition to a Low Carbon Economy'.

Much of this is still work in progress, providing very full agendas for our new issue-based Working Groups under the restructured Sustainability Steering Group.

There was a further and unwelcome surprise in the December Pre-Budget Report for 2010, when the Chancellor announced a reduction in the Climate Change Levy discount for Climate Change Agreement holders. FDF lobbied hard to reverse that decision and has also been pressing for greater clarity and consistency on a range of related issues, including Renewable Heat Incentives and Feed-In Tariffs. The sheer complexity of measures in this area is an increasing cause for concern, compounded by uncertainty over future policy developments following what happened at the Copenhagen Climate Change summit.