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Sustainability

Sustainability is about 'achieving a better quality of life for everyone, now and for future generations to come'. The environment is a central facet of this.

Across the UK, our members are committed to making a significant contribution to improving the environment.

Working collectively, they are making solid progress on their five-fold ambition to:

• Achieve a 20% absolute reduction in CO2 emissions by 2010 compared to 1990, aspiring to a 30% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020.
• Seek to send zero food and packaging waste to landfill from 2015.
• Make a significant contribution to WRAP's work to achieve an absolute reduction in the level of packaging reaching households by 2010 compared to 2006 and provide more advice to consumers on how best to recycle or otherwise recover used packaging.
• Achieve significant reductions in water use to help reduce stress on the nation's water supplies and contribute to an industry-wide absolute target to reduce water use by 20% by 2020 compared to 2007.
• Embed environmental standards in their transport practices, including contracts with hauliers as they fall for renewal, to achieve fewer and friendlier food transport miles and contribute to an absolute target for the food chain to reduce its environmental and social impacts by 20% by 2012 compared to 2002.

We are also committed to measuring progress against each of our ambitions and publishing annual progress - see our progress report.

A key milestone already achieved was the launch of the Federation House Commitment on water efficiency best practice on 28 January 2008. The Commitment was jointly developed by FDF and Envirowise, the Government's expert body on water efficiency, to help FDF achieve its water saving ambition and to help the sector as a whole.

Member companies, with a combined turnover of £15 billion, were the very first to sign up to it.

In Scotland, our members are engaged and committed to making a difference in this area, and many have already delivered real progress.

See below some examples which give you real insight into what we are doing in Scotland:

• SFDF 5 fold Environmental Ambition Presentation (pdf, 328kb) to the Scottish Government Experts Group for the development of health and environmental sustainability framework.
• Macsween Sustainability Report - pdf | 1.85Mb
• Pinneys of Scotland (The Seafood Company) carried out an extensive environmental audit to identify areas for improvement in order to develop a carbon management programme. The company then set ambitious targets to drive it towards environmental excellence.
• Young's Seafood: After signing FDF's transport commitment in July 2008, Young's has been working hard with its haulier to prepare for the inclusion of the Greener Food Transport Clause in contracts.