Jessica Sansom – Threats and Opportunities of Climate Change
November 3, 2009 by Dave Briggs - The Foundry House
Jessica is Head of Sustainability at Innocent Drinks and will be talking about the effect of climate change issues on small and medium sized enterprises.
Apologies for not posting these notes live – sadly the wifi didn’t stretch as far as this breakout room!
- Innocent has grown from £0 revenue in 1999 to £113million in 2007. Sales saw a drop in 2008 but now rising again.
- We must acknowledge that climate change is a threat to business – issues like where food will be grown, extreme weather conditions etc
- Exact outcome is uncertain but any change will have impact.
- Innocent are assessing risks and impacts on sources of fruit for their drinks. Can be depressing stuff, but it is better to know!
- This isn’t a fluffy feel-good thing for businesses to be involved in, it is in fact about the bottom line. Future proofing businesses.
- Innocent get through 12,000 tonnes of bananas a year!
- Key is to understand where your carbon impact is – innocent do regular carbon audits. Surprisingly, ‘food miles’ are relatively low for Innocent. Packaging is probably still the major part of the footprint (35%) along with manufacture
- To tackle packaging Innocent moved to 100% recycled content in packaging (from 50%). Suppliers were willing to test and trial this as Innocent relatively small at the time (such as when they first experimented with any recycled content in packaging).
- Move to 100% recycled packaging cost around £15k for testing. Material is the same cost. Has been a massive PR success.
- Innocent talk to suppliers about sustainability based on energy, water and waste. Just asking questions can have a great impact. In 6 months one manufacturerhalved their use of landfill; and identified 25% energy savings which led to a cost saving of £125k per year
- Not just tech solutions – behaviour and process change just as important, if not more so
- Make use of the government funding available to make these changes
- Innocent managed to take 8% paper out of the cartons they use – now Tetrapak have rolled this out to their other customers – again advantage from being relatively small
- Sustainable: nutrition, ingredients, production, packaging and legacy
- Always consider whether the resources exist to meet the needs of your business’s growth?
- Greenfly helps businesses make decisions about packaging.
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