Many of the presentations are interesting but from a climate change perspective you might be interested in the following:

• Mikkel Hansen, Maersk Line – on sea transport
• Ad Klaassen, Dutch Produce Association – on energy use and options in Dutch greenhouses
• Frederic Rosseneu, Freshfel Europe – on food miles vs carbon footprints
• Russell Mildon, European Commission is interesting too as it has very detailed stats and gives an indication of the direction of EU policy.

All presentations can be downloaded here.

These points describe how the company intends to achieve a range of goals across five key areas:

• Climate Change
• Waste
• Sustainable raw materials
• Fair partner
• Health

Re. climate change, M&S aims to make all its operations in the UK and Republic of Ireland carbon neutral by 2012. It intends to do so largely through energy reduction and investment in renewable energy, relying on offsetting for about 20% of the reductions. Note that the carbon neutral goal for this first five years covers only its operations - its suppliers are not included in the carbon neutrality commitment for this phase.

You can read the report here.

Corporate social responsibility report

Tesco has published its corporate social responsibility report for the year 2006/7. The company has pledged to achieve absolute reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from its UK business, and to publish the carbon footprint of all Tesco stores and distribution centres worldwide, with a target to halve emissions from such buildings by 2020. Read the report here.

It also aims to install what is thought to be the world's most advanced automated recycling machines in 120 Tesco stores and has a new target to reduce packaging by 25 per cent by 2010 has been set. All packaging have labels indicating whether it can be be recycled.

The report also estimates the company's total direct emissions for the financial year to February 2007 to be 4.13m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). This includes both UK and overseas operations. The UK business alone emitted 2.25m tonnes of CO2e or 55% of total Group direct emissions. This equates to approximately this 0.3% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions and 2% of the food industry’s emissions (by which is meant the retailing and manufacturing sector).

The UK food retail sector is estimated to emit 9.2m tonnes CO2e annually, plus the associated distribution emissions of approximately 2.4m tonnes CO2e. Tesco’s emissions therefore equate to roughly a fifth of the footprint of food retail. For more details see here.

Milk processor aims to cut GHG emissions

The Scandinavian milk processor, Arla Foods, aims to cut 25 per cent of its emission of green house gases (GHG) within production, transport, and packaging by 2020. Note that this includes emissions from the dairy farms themselves. You can read Arla’s press release here.

The Foodservice provider Compass Group (school dinners, hospitals, catering outlets etc) has announced that it will be providing solely Fairtrade bananas in the UK through its standard distribution network. In a move which is believed to be a first in the foodservice industry, Compass has confirmed that it will provide its customers, who make three million purchases a day, only Fairtrade bananas from May 2008. The move is part of Compass' commitment to ethical sourcing, supporting Fairtrade farmers and their communities.

You can read the press release here.

The sugar manufacturer, Tate & Lyle announced in February 2008 that it will move its entire retail cane sugars range to Fairtrade, marking the largest ever switch to the ethical labelling scheme by any major UK food or drink brand. In the first year alone, the switch will create a return of at least £2 million in Fairtrade premiumsfor cane farmers.

Read the press release here.

Nestle has launched its first Creating Shared Value report which provides figures on the impact of its global business activities on the environment and society. The report finds that in 2007, Nestlé reduced its direct greenhouse gas emissions by 16% compared to ten years ago, and its overall water withdrawal by 28%, while at the same time increasing the total volume of goods produced by 76%. See here to download the report.

Your daily chocolate bar

For those partial to the odd bar of chocolate, you might like to know that Cadbury has now calculated the carbon footprint of one of its bars. A standard 49 g bar of Dairy Milk work comes to 169g of CO2e. Interestingly, over 60% of the embedded emissions are associated with the milk content in the bar. More details can be found here.

Leading US organic dairy processor Aurora Organic Dairy has announced a new research initiative for reducing its carbon footprint. They will be funding four Masters students from the University of Michigan to undertake carbon and energy footprint analysis of their operations. Professor Greg Keoleian will be supervising the work. The initiative is reported here, or you can go to the University of Michigan website here.

In January 2008 M&S published its first annual progress report detailing the progress it has made on Plan A, which was launched in January 2007, and set out 100 key social and environmental actions that M&S has committed to achieving over 5 years. See earlier FCRN entry here.

For more information on Plan A, see here.

In October 2007 Sainsbury's announced that over the next three years it will convert 100% of its entire own-brand tea will to Fairtrade. This will be followed by Sainsbury's entire range of roast and ground coffee. Its Red Label tea will be 1005 Fairtrade by early 2008.

In July 2007 Cadbury Schweppes pledged a 50% reduction of net absolute carbon emissions by 2020. It plans to do this through a ‘balanced programme of saving, switching and, as a last resort, off-setting.’ (Saving involves energy efficient measures and the use of CHP type technologies; switching involves the use of renewable power sources while carbon offsetting involves both the buying of carbon credits via the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and offsetting as it is commonly defined).

More specifically, Cadbury Schweppes has set the following targets:

• 50% reduction of net absolute carbon emissions by 2020 - with a minimum of 30% from in-company actions
• 10% reduction in packaging used per tonne of product and 25% in the more highly packaged seasonal and gifting items
• Use more environmentally sustainable forms of packaging - aim for 60% biodegradable, with 100% of secondary packaging being recyclable
• All 'water scarce' sites to have water reduction programmes in place

For more information on Cadbury's environmental commitments, see here.

For the press release see here.

Added: 11.10.07

The Coca-Cola company has recently published its latest Environment Report covering the year 2006. Overall energy use has increased by 10% since 2005 and energy intensity has also increased – by 4% since 2005 'due in part' it says 'to certain products that are more energy-intensive.' This is interesting to note and perhaps casts some doubt on assumptions that technological improvements alone can achieve absolute (or even relative) reductions in energy use. Clearly market/product innovation can counter these. An increase in on-site production of PET bottles in 2006 also contributed to the systemwide energy use increase.

The report also gives progress on water use and packaging.

The Innocent drinks company claims to have become the first company in the world to package its drinks into 100% recycled plastic bottles. Four of its product lines are packaged in 100% recycled PET and the plan is to roll it out to all products by January 2008. The company says that the new bottles use 20% fewer materials (they are lighter) and have led to a 55% reduction in carbon emissions associated with their manufacture.

You can read the Innocent press relase here.

'Carbon neutral', as applied to these product supply chains, means that the carbon dioxide emitted to produce, pack, transport and distribute the fruit will be offset by mitigation practices which increase the capture of CO2 in order to achieve a 'neutral' balance. These practices entail new, more efficient transportation methods, changes to agricultural processes to reduce CO2 emissions, and partnering with local farmers to implement preservation and reforestation programs.

For more information, you can find the August 09 2007 press release here.

SMEs account for 99 per cent of the EU's food and drink industry (although not its energy use) and often face a number of barriers to implementing energy efficient methods, including the lack of human and financial resources and insufficient information on energy management.

Download the handbook here. For more information about BESS see their website here.

(In the links section you'll find a link to the EU Optipolygen project. Polygeneration is the use of multiple energy sources to cover multiple energy needs. eg. biomass can be used as the energy input and the outputs can be combined heat, power and refrigeration. See here for more information.)

• Lightweighting its bottles: A 500ml beer bottle weighs in at 299g, making it around a third lighter than previous efforts and cutting Adnams' carbon emissions by 415 tonnes per year.
• Building a new 4,400m2 low carbon distribution centre built with lime and hemp, with a 'living' roof lined with sedum, or plants.

Adnams is also in the process of modernising its brewery and is in the process of commissioning a new brewstream that will divert steam to reheat the next brew instead of into the atmosphere. The system improves steam recovery by 90 per cent, inevitably cutting down on energy bills. Adnams has also set up an internal Action Group to educate staff about the need to save energy. See Word doc for more information.

In a new report, Carbon Footprints in the supply chain: the next step for business, the Carbon Trust outlines the steps that businesses should take to identify the carbon footprint of the individual products and services they sell. By undertaking a carbon investigation of their supply chains, businesses can map out the carbon emitted at every stage of a product’s lifecycle from source to shelf, consumption and disposal.

This approach will help businesses respond to growing consumer demand by delivering genuinely low carbon products and services. Recent research published by the Carbon Trust showed that 66 per cent of UK consumers want to know the carbon footprint of the products and services they buy and two thirds are more likely to buy a product with a low carbon footprint.

The Carbon Trust has worked on pilot projects in snack foods with Walkers and in print media with Trinity Mirror. These projects alone have already identified potential annual savings for the two businesses of £2.7 million and 28,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum – the equivalent carbon emissions of 5,000 households. The Carbon Trust is now also working on similar projects with Boots, Cadburys Schweppes and Marks & Spencer. The project with Boots aims to track the carbon footprint of its products with the aim of creating a new ‘low carbon shampoo’.

The Guardian (11 June 2008) reported that: 'Once built, this will be Britain's biggest greenhouse development, which will increase by 15% the UK's crop of salad vegetables. Cucumbers and peppers will be grown hydroponically and picked continuously from February to October, tomatoes harvested every day of the week, 52 weeks a year. The project is costing £80 million and will cover 91 hectares.Combined Heat and Plower plants are being installed that that will provide enough electricity to supply over 50,000 homes; more than half of Thanet’s needs. CHP will generate power for the National Grid but will also produce by-products needed to grow - the hot water produced will replace conventional boiler heating normally needed to warm the greenhouses whilst the carbon dioxide will be absorbed by the plants as part of the natural growing process.

Work officially kicked off at Thanet Earth in November 2007, the site designated to become the UK’s largest-ever glasshouse development for pepper, tomato and cucumber production. The 94-hectare site on the Isle of Thanet in Kent, will eventually house seven glasshouses, a 30,000sqm packhouse, a research and development centre and wildlife and education projects, creating some 550 jobs and producing salad lines 52 weeks a year. The group anticipates the project will add an extra 15-20 per cent to current UK salad production area. Thanet Earth will also generate its own electricity, using a combined heat and power engineering system and an on-site sub-station, from which it can then sell enough energy back to the National Grid to power 50,000 homes.

Polygeneration is is the use of multiple energy sources to cover multiple energy needs. That is, a range of energy inputs can be used (including biofuels) to generate heat, power and cooling (ie. refrigeration).

This report, published by Optipolygen, says that polygeneration can provide 70-80% of all the energy needed by the food and drink industry in the EU15. 20% of this can be generated from the food and drink wastes themselves. It also has some figures for total energy use in the EU food and drink sector.

The plant will initially produce bioethanol, but the partners will look at the feasibility of converting it to biobutanol once the technology is available. BP and DuPont intend to build a jointly funded biobutanol demonstration plant, which will run in parallel with the main plant.

This announcement follows the previously announced investment by British Sugar to build the UK’s first bioethanol plant at Wissington, Norfolk. This plant will produce 70m litres (55,000 tonnes) of bioethanol a year, using sugar beet as a feedstock, and the plant will start production next month.

You can read the ABF press release here.