• We make and sell three kinds of confectionery: chocolate, gum and candy
• We operate in over 60 countries
• John Cadbury opened for business in 1824 – making us nearly 200 years young
• We work with around 35,000 direct and indirect suppliers
• We employ around 50,000 people
• Every day millions of people around the world enjoy our brands
Purple Goes Green
In July 2007 Cadbury launched our vision for the year 2020, Purple Goes Green, which is our absolute commitment to action on climate change.
This stated our intention to shrink our global environmental footprint and set new targets building on the commitments made in our 2006 CSR report (when we committed to develop a reliance on renewable energy; reduce carbon based fuels and use 100% recoverable or biodegradable packaging).
The additional targets were a response to our increased understanding of the challenge of climate change and were developed with advice from Forum for the Future, a sustainable development charity. They have been seen to set the pace for food manufacturers around the world.
Todd Stitzer, our Chief Executive Officer said at the time:
“We recognise that if we are serious about tackling climate change, we need to be “absolutely” committed. This means re-thinking the way we do business, embedding sustainability into every decision we take. Not only will this have a strong social and environmental impact but also a positive economic impact too in the longer term.
However, we realise we cannot minimise the environmental impact of the manufacturing industry alone. We need to work with our people, our peers and partners in our supply chain to reduce the size of our collective carbon footprint – acting as a united force for good”.
Our Purple Goes Green vision was launched seeing the business opportunities and benefits of acting on climate change. Our heritage and philosophy is built on the principle that business can and should be a force for good in the world. Purple Goes Green will make our production processes more effective as a whole which will result in not only further energy efficiency and an improvement in our environmental performance but also in greater business efficiencies. Governments, consumers and even our employees are demanding that business takes action on climate change. By making and achieving these commitments, we are meeting the expectations of our stakeholders and setting the pace for food manufacturers across the world at the same time.
In the future, we envisage that the cost of energy (and of carbon emissions) will increase, so the benefits will also increase over time. A review by Forum for the Future found that Purple Goes Green has the potential to be net positive over the longer term.
Governance
We have already reviewed our integrated portfolio management (IPM) process to include sustainability considerations at each stage of decision making. Our overall sustainability commitments, including Purple Goes Green, are also part of our yearly budgeting process.
Energy
We aim to reduce our absolute carbon emissions by 50% by 2020. This will be done by a combination of activities:
1. Save energy
o Minimise the use of energy by improving processes and efficiency
o Install CHP/co-generation to optimise total energy requirements
2. Switch to more environmentally-friendly energy forms
o Switch to low or zero carbon fuels
o Purchase electricity on renewable energy tariffs
o Install “renewable energy” generation on-site (solar, wind, bio fuel)
3. Offset by incentivising Saving and Switching by others
o Purchase “carbon offsets” or buy (and retire) “carbon credits” for any remaining carbon emissions. Offsetting will be used as an option of last resort.
By end 2007, we had reduced our carbon emissions by 3%, as compared to 2006 – equivalent to almost 24,000 tonnes. We estimate that we will reduce our emissions by 10% by 2010.
We have developed a global energy roadmap, outlining measures to deliver our target and an estimate of the percentage of the target we will achieve on a yearly basis. We are currently developing regional roadmaps within the same framework.
To support the rollout of our energy reduction strategy and ensure transfer of knowledge across our global business, we have developed a toolkit for carbon and energy reduction. This toolkit has been shared with colleagues within the Supply Chain function through workshops in the first half of 2008. It covers areas such as how to structure an energy management programme and how to reduce energy. It is available on the intranet and on CD as well. It is a key part of building capability to achieve our targets within the business.
With the knowledge that collection of good reliable accurate data is essential to any energy management plan, we have put in place an automated monitoring and targeting system, which is already installed at every site in Britain & Ireland, in South Africa, in four sites in Europe, and is currently being rolled out through all of the Americas. The system allows us to view data taken directly from the meters every half an hour from any site via any internet connection anywhere in the world. It allows us to identify opportunities for energy reduction and also has useful analysis tools allowing us to track how energy and water use has varied over time and identify trends.
Some examples of energy actions are given below:
• In 2007, we changed all the electricity we use in Ireland to power provided by wind turbines, reducing the carbon emissions for the Irish business by almost 40%.
• In 2008, we launched the largest roof top solar installation in New South Wales, Australia, in our Huntingwood factory. The system is made up of a total of 640 solar panels manufactured locally at BP Solar’s facility in Sydney Olympic Park. It is capable of producing enough energy to power 21 homes while saving 140 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions or the equivalent to taking 35 cars off the road.
• Some of our electricity was already supplied from renewable energy sources – such as the hydro-power that supplies our sites in Tasmania and Ghana, solar heating in Pakistan and renewable power in Canada. At our Induri site in India we use bagasse from the local sugar industry to fuel the boilers on site while in Bauru in Brazil we use the heat of the sun to generate hot water for use in the kitchens and amenities block. Many of our sites have small scale solar electric panels providing power for external equipment such as lights and pumps, for example our Bournville UK facility uses solar power to drive effluent sampling equipment.
• In 2007, our factory in Tasmania converted boilers from heavy fuel oil to natural gas firing, leading to a 33% reduction in CO2 emissions.
• A new feeding system for boilers in our Cali plant in Colombia led to a 10.5% reduction in the consumption of gas in 2007.
• By implementing the simple low cost techniques captured in the abovementioned toolkits – such as fixing steam & compressed air leaks and installing variable speed drives – our sites in Canada have managed to reduce energy consumption by 10-15% during 2007.
• Cadbury has also invested in new technologies where appropriate, such as combined heat and power (CHP) plants in Rockford (US) and Nagoya (Japan). We are currently working on projects to install CHP at a number of our larger sites in the UK, Europe and Africa including a CHP plant powered by biogas in Poland.
• Our new office buildings in Cadbury House, Uxbridge and Bournville in the UK as well as Rolle in Switzerland – together home to almost 1000 employees – have energy considerations built into their design e.g. workstations in Uxbridge are designed and constructed in line with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) principles and contain 80% recycled materials; and all lights at Cadbury House – work floors, store rooms, meeting rooms and offices are activated by motion sensors.
Packaging
Our full range of packaging commitments are:
- 100% recoverable or biodegradable packaging
- 10% reduction in packaging with a more stretching target of 25% for seasonal and gifting ranges
- 60% biodegradable packaging including paper, board and biodegradable plastics
- 100% of secondary packaging to be recyclable where practicable
- All paperboard packaging to be supplied by certificated sustainable forest sources by 2010
- We will also set a ceiling for product/pack volume ratio.
Packaging actions already taken include:
• Cadbury Treasure Eggs are a new product for Easter 2008, which have no cardboard box, they’re just wrapped in foil. This reduces plastic by 78% and uses 65% less cardboard than a standard egg. Cadbury have also reduced the amount of plastic casing in small and medium sized Easter eggs, thereby saving 202 tonnes of plastic (which is the equivalent of 4.8m PET bottles). Finally, we have reduced the amount of cardboard used in transporting the eggs from warehouses into stores, thus saving 117 tonnes of cardboard or 2000 trees.
Cadbury Treasure Egg with reduced packaging
• In 2008, Cadbury North America launched a new display case for products such as Trident Xtra Care, using 50% less cardboard. As well as saving on materials, these display cases were also more efficient to transport, saving a substantial amount of cost as well.
• Cadbury Buttons Easter Chick was a new product for Easter 2007, and was not sold in a carton, but instead was simply wrapped in aluminium foil on existing equipment and then sold in a plastic forming loaded directly into a low-wall shelf ready pack. This considerably reduced the packaging used.
Water
We have reduced our consumption of water by 10% between 2006 and 2007. Our business used approximately 9 million tonnes of water in 2007 compared with 10 million in 2006 . Our water strategy is still in the early stage of development but the intention in 2007 was to ensure that all “water scarce” sites have reduction programmes in place. We have now strengthened our commitment to include all our sites.
Our Asia Pacific region is leading activity in this area and is helping to inform wider development, with the region adopting a target of water neutrality at manufacturing sites. Australia and India are the lead countries. Our goal for factories in Australia is to become water-neutral through careful water management including reducing water use as well as capturing and treating waste water and condensate. We are sharing lessons from the Asia Pacific region through workshops in the first half of 2008. We have also developed a water management toolkit to share good practice across the business.
Water actions already taken include:
• Our Huntingwood site in Australia was awarded a Sydney Water Innovation Award for introducing waterless lubrication in its production. This has now been introduced across 12 lines in Australia and New Zealand, saving tens of millions of litres of water a year.
• Cadbury India aims for a goal of zero water discharge. Our Bangalore factory has harvested, cleaned and filtered rainwater for recharging the aquifer, providing assistance for 40% of the population dependant on groundwater. The factory has implemented two forms of capturing this water for recovery and re-use from the 60 hectare site. The storm water from the roof of the factory is collected and is re-used directly into cooling towers and boilers.
• In 2007, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) along with the State’s Waste Management and Research Center (WMRC) honoured Cadbury in Rockford, United States for developing a non-contact system to provide cooling water to process equipment. Using this system in the three chiller cooling towers means discharge to the sanitary district has been reduced by more than 8 million gallons at a saving of 13 million dollars.
• Cadbury UK has invested in an onsite wastewater treatment plant in our cocoa processing site in Chirk, United Kingdom, to clean up effluent arising from manufacturing processes. This has led to savings of approximately 17 million litres per annum. As a result, water consumption on site has reduced by 15% per year and we have identified opportunities to increase this to 50%. Similar technologies are being deployed in sites in Europe, Russia and Mexico and work is being done to understand the potential for recycling in each case.
• At our Valladolid factory in Spain we have installed systems to help us recycle the water used in the vacuum systems on site and at our facility in Beirut moving to dryer cleaning methods has reduced the site water consumption by 11%.
Advocacy and Culture Change
A key part of the Cadbury Purple Goes Green initiative is advocacy and awareness raising, starting with our colleagues but extending to the wider society. Meeting our environmental commitments requires a change in the way we make decisions and operate – as our ambitious targets will not be reached through “business as usual”.
The first step to achieve our targets is to create awareness of climate change and our company’s commitments amongst our employees. Engagement of people at different levels of our company is key to changing mindsets. This engagement facilitates change in the way we operate and the way decisions are made.
We have established a “culture change” programme in order to create environmental awareness amongst colleagues at all levels of the organisation. This programme is being led by “green advocates”, who are enthusiasts committed to creating environmental awareness within their sites. They operate in the form of a network that regularly shares information and tools through our intranet and emails. As of now, the expanding network has around 200 members covering almost 50 sites across 35 different countries the globe. Some examples of their activities aimed at building environmental consciousness are:
• In the UK, Green Advocates introduced eco-friendly stationery, re-educated people about recycling, integrated recycling into the office clearout day and encouraged people to buy eco-friendly Christmas gifts in December;
• In Australia, a ride/walk to work day resulted in 40 colleagues using eco means to get to work;
• Green Advocates in Australia were instrumental in the implementation of a solar electricity system on the roof of the manufacturing site in Huntingwood;
• The US team organised a Sustainability Awareness Week which included working smarter day (video conference training), black and white day (workshops on smarter printing), green day (turning off monitors, introducing new dishwashers, car pooling, switching off plasmas etc);
• The New Zealand Dunedin team got colleagues out of the office to help clean Dunendin’s coastline as part of Seaweek 2008;
• In the Gladstone Plant in Canada they had an internal campaign on World Environment Day – encouraging colleagues to take alternative transport, bring a litterless lunch, unplug all non-essential appliances at home, not use the elevator etc. 105 colleagues took alternative transport resulting in an estimated 701.01kg reduction in CO2.
• In Poland, Green Advocates ran a campaign on ecological offices, which had colleagues sending over 80 ideas to green the office
• When plastic bags were banned by some supermarkets in Greece, colleagues used it as an opportunity to campaign along with the Athens local authority – sponsoring reusable shopping bags
Awareness campaigns run by the green advocates are designed based on local reality and culture. This brings together a group of like minded people sharing information and campaigning for action on the environment within their factory or offices.
In addition, our culture change programme has a specific programme of work to develop sustainability leadership capabilities. A bespoke “Building Sustainability Leadership” Development Programme was designed along with Forum for the Future and the first pilot was attended by over 30 participants from different functions across the globe. We created new role of Sustainable Business Practices Manager within our Corporate Responsibility team to head the programmes roll out, tailoring content to geographic and specialist functional interests (e.g. Marketing, Supply Chain, Science & Technology) in order to maximise its impact.
Finally, we have identified a number of process changes which we can make to embed sustainability into the day-to-day thinking and decision making.
The key benefits of this culture change/environmental awareness programme are:
• An openness to change amongst our colleagues, which is essential to introduce changes to meet our environmental commitments
• Reductions in waste and consumption in sites where awareness campaigns are run e.g. reduction of paper ordered by 25% in our US office as a result of an awareness campaign
• Strengthening of employee commitment and loyalty – as the programme demonstrates our constant values within a modern and relevant agenda. This appears to be particularly resonant with high potential colleagues.
Our learnings:
• Tap into the passion of the people within your organisation to bring about changes which are beneficial to the environment and society
• Think global, act local
• Connect people and ideas in order to make relevant impact
Advocacy through employees is one element of campaigning for action on climate change. We have also taken a campaigning stance externally. Some highlights are given below:
• We were one of the pioneering partners of the Carbon Trust in testing and developing their carbon footprinting standard;
• We’ve been reporting our emissions to the Carbon Disclosure project since 2003 and in 2007, we announced a Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration with them, which will engage our supply chain to report carbon footprints and climate change-relevant information;
• We played a key role in developing the UK’s Food Industry Sustainability Strategy (FISS), along with DEFRA in the UK – and were one of the few companies represented on each of the working groups involved in development of the FISS;
• We were active in the development of the UK Food and Drinks Federation’s “Five Fold Ambition” for sustainability and are pleased that they have taken the route of “absolute” targets for CO2 reduction;
• In 2007, we were invited to be the business delivering a key note speech at the opening the European Union’s Green Week. Chris Van Steenbergen, President of our Europe region shared the platform with Mr. Stavros Dimas, Commissioner for Environment, European Commission; and encouraged other businesses to take action on climate change.
• In the UK, we are also signed up to the Courtauld Commitment to reduce packaging;
• Copies of our energy toolkit are shared with our suppliers to help reduce the carbon emissions associated with our supply chain;
• We are working with our dairy farmers in the UK to reduce their carbon footprint;
• We work in partnership with organisations like Forum for the Future and The Climate Group to bring climate issues to the fore.
