► SustainabilityOur Planet

Our Planet

With strengthened commitments on tackling climate change and deforestation, improving the sustainability of farming practices and reducing waste, the planet pillar of our Enriching Life Plan contributes to a healthier planet by nurturing the natural resources that we rely on to make our food. 
 

What's at stake?

Climate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a crucial moment. From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production, to rising sea levels and rainfall that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale (United Nations). Around 30% of greenhouse gas emissions globally are attributable to the food system – encompassing agriculture and land use, processing and transport, through to consumption and food waste. The food industry has a major role to play in helping the food system transition to a more sustainable, resilient future.  

 

Our ambitions, targets and progress



 

Our contribution  

Our plan recognises the environmental impact of our operations and our wider supply chain. We have stepped up our actions limiting the effects of climate change and we are developing our resilience to climate change (see TCFD statement, available in our annual report). We want to do more to protect natural resources through our supply chain and we are strengthening our efforts in tackling food waste. 

We understand the need to act quickly and transform our ways of working and have answered the call from the United Nations to the business community to set bold and ambitious targets, joining ‘Business Ambition for 1.5C°’. We have validated our 2030 decarbonisation targets with the Science-Based Targets initiative and we have established site energy councils to drive the reduction in energy usage and carbon emissions in our sites. We continue to support the transition to clean electricity, strengthening our target to use solely renewable electricity by 2030, and embarking on our own transition developing investments for new generation capacity. With a complex supply chain and operations, we have built on our first full greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint to identify our most important ingredients based on scale and carbon impact. As part of our work to drive the decarbonisation of our products, we have mapped the carbon commitments of our suppliers in these key sectors and also carried out a study into their resilience to the impacts of climate change.  

We recognise that we all need to protect the natural resources on which we depend. We are therefore tackling deforestation in the products we source which carry the greatest risks: palm, soy, beef, pulp and cocoa. We continue our work with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) to drive supply of more sustainable commodities and are moving to Rainforest Alliance certification for our direct sourced cocoa. Closer to home, we’re committed to regenerative agriculture where it can help us reduce the carbon emissions associated with the ingredients we use, improve their resilience to climate change and help protect natural resources which are at risk. To support this work, we have joined the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) and The UK Water Roadmap, which is helping us to better understand the evolving science and to collaborate with other businesses. 

Our sites have sent zero waste to landfill since 2016, and as signatories to the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap and Champions 12.3, we have long worked on reducing food waste in our operations. As part of our new partnership with FareShare UK, we have identified further opportunities at our sites for the reduction of food waste in our processes. Where we do have waste, we have identified new routes for the redistribution of food which is fit for human consumption and have also started working with a new contractor who is helping us to divert waste not suitable for human consumption to animal feed. In order to support the reduction of food waste in the homes of consumers, we launched a new on-pack activity and website, helping raise awareness of the issues of food waste and giving practical recipe ideas for some of the most common leftovers (see case study). 

 

Case Studies

Supporting local environments

 

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Our Green Matters champions across our sites, have been busy partnering with local charities and community groups to help protect and restore local natural habitats, and create new ones for biodiversity to thrive. In 2022, colleagues have taken 11 days out to help plant more than 19,000, carefully selected broadleaved and coniferous native woodland trees, at 11 local sites in support of Wakefield and Barnsley councils’ efforts to adapt to climate change and connect communities back with nature. In Ashford, working with the Kent Wildlife Trust, colleagues have identified some suitable land near the neighbouring River Stour to convert into a pond, where they hope to attract smooth newts, diving beetles and dragonfly nymphs back into the area. These will also be spaces for colleagues to take time out for their well-being and connect back with nature.


Sustainable Palm Oil

 

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Palm oil is an extremely versatile oil that has many different properties and functions. It is also an incredibly efficient crop, producing more oil per land area than any other equivalent vegetable oil crop. To get the same amount of alternative oils like soybean or coconut oil would require anything between four and 10 times more land, which would shift the deforestation problem to other parts of the world and threaten other habitats and species (1). This is why we are committed to sourcing only sustainable, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certified palm oil which protects the environment and the local communities who depend on it for their livelihoods, so that palm oil can continue to play a key role in food security. BM TRADA, the leading independent certification body, has certified all of our sites that handle palm oil as having RSPO-approved traceability systems, which means they are capable of guaranteeing the use of palm oil from sustainable sources. We are delighted to have maintained 100% RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) certified palm oil throughout the year.

License number: 4-0019-06-100-00. Check our progress at https://rspo.org/members/103/ Premier-Foods- Group-Limited

(1) Source '8 things to know about palm oil', WWF, available at: https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/8-things-know-about-palm-oil.


 

A Fresh Take on Food Waste

 

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In September 2022, we launched our ‘Fresh Take on Food Waste’ campaign. Following work with WRAP to identify the most wasted foods in UK homes, we launched a website to help raise awareness of the issues of food waste and to give recipe ideas for people to use leftovers to make delicious, nutritious and affordable meals for all the family. Links to the website appeared on over three million packs of our Loyd Grossman, Homepride and Sharwood’s cooking sauces and we worked with our retail partners to promote the initiative in-store, online, in retailer magazines and other trade media. Visit the website for inspiration on how to reduce food waste: https://www.freshtakeonfoodwaste.co.uk/