The UK and Ireland division released its 2012 Creating Shared Value Plan under the banner ‘Building a Sustainable Future’. Nestlé highlighted its Easter egg range that incorporated 100% recyclable packaging and claimed that it was the first UK confectioner to offer this.
The company also trialled different recycling solutions enabling half of Nestlé’s factories in the UK to be verified as sending zero waste to landfill. It said that this was well ahead of the target for all 14 to have achieved this by 2015.
New targets include on-pack messaging on all confectionery products that are portionable by 2014.
Fiona Kendrick, chief executive and chairman for Nestlé UK & Ireland said: “We are very proud of the significant progress we have made in our sustainability journey so far and have set ourselves ambitious targets for the years ahead.
“As a major UK manufacturer and employer we have a responsibility to not only build a sustainable future for our business but also society at large, and in particular the communities in which we operate. We need to continue to think differently and find new solutions to the problems of today in order to protect our business of tomorrow.”
According to the firm, more than 2bn Nestlé products are sold in the UK every year and go into over 96% of UK households. The food manufacturer exports over £300m worth of products to over 50 countries.
Other highlights from the plan include:
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 16% since 2006 – replacing five heavy oil boilers at our Girvan factory with two gas -fired boilers resulted in a reduction of 6,000 tonnes of GHG emissions in one year;
Becoming the “first major confectioner in the UK” to remove all artificial colours, flavours and preservatives – the result of “seven years of research in the UK”;
Working with First Milk dairy farmers in Girvan to help them reduce their environmental impact and improve the quality of their milk. Since the partnership began in 2011 the farmers “have saved 5,517 tonnes of carbon and reduced total non-livestock water usage by 5.1%”.
Further future targets include:
Reducing total water consumption by 40% by 2015;
Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 30% by 2015;
Introducing Biodiversity programmes at all 14 sites across the UK by 2015;
Increasing the number of confectionery products containing less than 110 calories per serving by the end of 2012;
Establishing a community sustainability learning centre at Nestlé’s Fawdon site by 2014.
