ADAS continues to build its carbon footprinting expertise within the food industry, despite the current trading climate. Food businesses are targeting reductions in their carbon footprint, both within their own business operations and also their supply chains.
ADAS continues to build its carbon footprinting expertise within the food industry, despite the current trading climate. Food businesses are targeting reductions in their carbon footprint, both within their own business operations and also their supply chains. The reasons for the interest include:
- Using carbon footprinting to identify the ‘quick’ energy efficiency gains and cost savings within their manufacturing process and supply chain
- Investigating investment opportunities in low carbon technologies with short payback periods to save energy costs and reduce carbon footprint
- Enhancing their environmental performance with both customers and consumers
- Delivering a part of their corporate responsibility strategy of increased expectation from stakeholders and investors to reduce company emissions.
ADAS expertise is in measuring and assessing carbon emissions within both food manufacturing and supply chains, and identifying the carbon ‘hotspots’ – the big numbers. The real value from the ADAS input is in identifying and implementing ‘Improvement Plans’ that bring real practical solutions to reducing carbon emissions.
These Improvement Plans will achieve both cost savings and reductions in carbon emissions by identifying and implementing;
- energy efficiency gains - the quick wins
- investment in low carbon technologies
- structural change to the manufacturing or production process to acheive lower carbon emissions.
ADAS Carbon Conference
The ADAS Carbon Conference in November 2008 was a real success and was supported by all parts of the food supply chain - retailers, food manufacturers and primary producers. It was the first conference of its kind that brought together all the parts of the supply chain and provided an opportunity for the different supply chain perspectives on carbon reduction to be presented and debated. Key messages from the Conference included:
- Carbon footprinting, particularly within overseas supply chains, can be very data intensive
- Time and resource needs to be invested in implementing Improvement Plans to provide practical solutions in reducing carbon
- Consider using more generic carbon data to identify the key ‘hotspots’ within the supply chain and invest time and resource on developing and implementing the specific Carbon Reduction Plans.
For more information on water footprinting, please contact Mark Holmes by e-mail mark.holmes@adas.co.uk or telephone 01427 728792.