It's the government and media buzzword of the moment, but what exactly is a carbon footprint? It's a measure of how much carbon dioxide (CO2) individuals or businesses generate. CO2 makes up 80 per cent of the emissions known as greenhouse gases. These gases stay in the atmosphere, forming a blanket around the earth which traps heat and causes global warming. Greenhouse gases are mainly caused through the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, by power stations to produce electricity. Emissions from vehicle exhausts and aeroplanes also contain high levels of CO2
Factories account for 93 per cent of the company’s electricity usage, but in the last five years they’ve reduced energy consumption by 7.3 per cent. This is before taking the new in house bottle blowing into account, which has actually increased energy use by three per cent. ‘But,’ says Graham Dale, head of quality, safety and environment, ‘our blowing equipment is more efficient than our previous suppliers and by doing it on-site we’re not transporting bottles, so on the whole there are big benefits to the environment.’
Site initiatives include reusing the hot water from preheating bottles at Widford in the pasteurisers and investing in conveyors that switch off automatically when no bottles are detected. Sites have also worked with suppliers to reduce the pressure needed to blow bottles, by as much as seven bar, ‘The most pleasing thing is that everyone has taken responsibility for saving energy. Britvic has a young, fuel-efficient vehicle fleet and lorries are filled on return routes, so don’t run journeys empty. ‘But there is plenty more we can do, and we’ll be working with the Logistics team this year,’ adds Graham.
Did you know that Britvic has reduced its waste to landfill by 72% since 2002 and that 10000 tonnes of material has already been taken out of our primary packaging.