The Environment

We recognise that our business has an impact upon the environment, both through our manufacturing and logistics operations and through our manufactured products and the way in which they are used by our consumers. We also recognise that we have a responsibility – to all of our stakeholders – to run our business in ways which minimise the adverse impacts and make a positive contribution to meeting global environmental challenges. We aim to identify and vigorously pursue opportunities across our Group to reduce our reliance on increasingly scarce materials and to minimise our impact on the environment while delivering margin improvement and continuing to build a sustainable business, thereby creating a ‘win:win’ both for the environment and our business. We call our approach ‘Profit with a Purpose’.

Environmental targets set
In previous reports we have stated our commitment to the continuous improvement of our environmental performance by:

reporting and reducing the Group’s carbon footprint;
minimising waste; and
efficient use of energy, water and other natural resources in our office, factory and warehouse environments.

This has continued during the past year and, to bring greater focus to this process and to motivate our local businesses and employees, we have set targets in four key environmental areas:

A summary of projects carried out during the year as part of the journey to delivering on our environmental commitments is set out below.

Carbon

Our planet is getting warmer with many damaging consequences. It is a global problem to which we all need to respond – and as a business we are committed to doing our bit.

We are focused on measuring and reducing the emissions associated with the fuels used to produce energy from our factories, either via direct consumption of fossil fuels such as diesel oils or gas or via indirect electricity consumed in the factories. Key elements of our approach are conservation of energy, finding alternative more fuel efficient processes and using alternative low carbon sources of energy.

Our absolute direct CO2 emissions (i.e. Scope 1 and Scope 2, see diagram on page 23) for the last four years have been 147,729 metric tonnes (2008/09), 133,181 metric tonnes (2009/10), 141,083 metric tonnes (2010/11) and 123,621 metric tonnes (2011/12). Since 2008/09 we have reduced our absolute carbon emissions by 16.3%. We have achieved a 12.4% reduction in carbon versus last year against an increase of 4.5% in production tonnage. This was principally delivered by our Nigerian business which has been able to implement more efficient processes and has moved to more carbon efficient fuels.

Absolute carbon emission for Scope 1 and Scope 2 - Percentage reduction total CO2 versus total CO2 baseline of 2008/09

We recognise that, given the significant progress which we have made in recent years, continuous improvement on our 2011/12 base line will become increasingly challenging but we are committed to reducing our carbon emissions further and are already planning initiatives across our businesses to meet our new target.

Our carbon footprint scope

To date we have already delivered some significant savings in carbon across our business:

1,273 metric tonnes of carbon saved this year

In May 2012 our Kenyan factory successful installed and commissioned a five metric tonnes per hour Biomass fuelled boiler to provide steam and hot water for the factory, saving 1,273 metric tonnes of carbon per year, which equates to 65% of the Kenyan carbon footprint for 2011/12. The Biomass boiler burns organic waste which would otherwise have gone to landfill. By using this organic waste, we are able to put a waste crop to good use and avoid the burning of fossil fuels.

In Greece, energy saving activity resulted in a reduction of 770 metric tonnes of carbon which represents a 9.5% reduction in the overall footprint of that business. This has been achieved through a variety of projects ranging from separating the cooled loading bays into two to prevent the loss of cool air when loading trucks, upgrading refrigeration equipment and changing lights in the warehouse to low energy bulbs at our Schimatari site
In Nigeria our total operations have reduced carbon emissions by 9.7% (Scope 1 and Scope 2) from a 2010/11 baseline against an increase in production volume of 9.7% driven mainly by improved efficiencies and moving to lower carbon fuels. For example, at our Ilupeju manufacturing site we completed our conversion of the diesel generators to operate on a combination of diesel and gas

Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)
The Company has continued its commitment to participate in the CDP. The CDP is an independent, not-for-profit organisation working to drive down greenhouse gas emissions and sustainable water use by businesses and cities. The CDP operates the only global climate change reporting system, gathering data on company strategies and performance with regard to carbon emissions and water use. As a business we have been participating in the CDP for the last four years with a continued commitment to reduce our carbon footprint. Currently we report on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. We have an ambition to ultimately work to Scope 3 (which includes transportation and contract manufacturing activity) and hope to be able to measure our carbon impact within Scope 3 in the coming years.