Climate change and net zero

On 24 February, the FDF launched our Ambition 2025 Mid-term Review and Ambition 2025 Progress Report 2020 which was supported by a series of member case studies.

As highlighted in this year’s progress report, there has been exceptional progress in some areas, including:

• 55% reduction in CO2 emissions, five years before the target was due to be reached.
• 41.5% reduction in absolute water consumption in 2019 and support for the Courtauld 2025 Water Ambition.
• Contributed to the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap.
• Continued to build relationships with key stakeholders and with UK governments including through engagement on various the Plastics tax; undertook advocacy on PRN cost crisis; supported the UK Plastics Pact; and launched new guidelines on using recycled content in plastic packaging applications.
• Promoted the fewer and friendlier miles agenda through FDF’s 10 Point Checklist.
• Updated and promoted the Sustainability Resource Hub.
• Promoted the FDF Natural Capital Awareness Document.

The FDF also published a press release, with supporting quote from Environment Minister, Rebecca Pow MP. The launch has been extensively covered across the trade media.

BEIS have announced an additional round of funding for phase 1 applications (opening 8th March, closing 14th July) of the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF). To encourage applications, BEIS and FDF are holding a second joint webinar on 23rd March at 2pm.

Register for the event

Does your company have a leading environmental initiative?

The FDF Environmental Leadership award category is for companies that can meet either of the criteria below:

• Embedding sustainability throughout a product from development right through to customer use and disposal
• Ground-breaking initiatives to reduce your company's impact on the planet

Enter before the closing date of 28 February 2021, for your chance to win. It’s completely free to enter!

View the full criteria and enter now

Find our more about the FDF Awards

Catch up on Day One: Session Two of the FDF Convention discussing Sustainable Healthy Diets and the National Food Strategy.

Available for listening on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music and all other major podcast platforms

Listen now

In June 2019, the UK became the first major economy to pass net zero emissions into law. Covid-19 has brought the concept of a ‘green transition’ to the fore of the debate around economic recovery, and there are a number of key publications in the coming months including:

• Climate Change Committee 6th Carbon Budget (9th December) to include a roadmap for decarbonisation of the food and drink sector
• Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy (Spring 2021)
• HM Treasury report into the costs of meeting Net Zero (Spring 2021)
• National Food Strategy Part 2 (Spring 2021) to include focus on climate change and the environment

This narrative project will help the FDF understand the wider impact of net zero / the green transition and the relevant risks/opportunities to its members and the wider sector. This will enable positions to be developed based on evidence-based asks, to input into these and other future policy debates and consultations. Structured engagement with the net zero debate, will help the industry benefit from future policy change, establish certainty on the future decarbonisation trajectory and changes required as well as to help inform commercial strategy.