Together the trade association has identified five areas where it believes member companies can make the biggest collective difference; known as the FDF’s Five Fold Environmental Ambition:
- Significantly reduce their CO2 emissions
- Strive to sent zero food and packaging waste to landfill
- Cut the amount of packing reaching households
- Reduce the amount of water used in factories
- Achieve fewer and friendlier food transport miles
For each ambition, FDF is working with a range of partners and members to develop innovative solutions to help businesses improve their environmental performance and operational efficiencies. A programme of activities undertaken by WRAP and supported by the FDF – such as the Courtauld Commitment on packaging reduction – highlights the benefits of this collaborative style of action.
As one of the leading supporters of FDF’s Five-fold Environmental Ambition, Mars initiated a project with WRAP to trial methods for lightweighting glass containers and another to redesign the tins used to retail its brand of small, mixed, wrapped chocolates. For example, to environmentally improve its 500g Uncle Ben’s jars, Mars created new moulds which altered the design and reduced the height, enabling a 6% weight reduction to be achieved.
Mars is also part of a group of FDF members who have been working with WRAP to reduce the packaging of Easter eggs. As a result, by Easter 2008 most of the eggs sold by Mars were packaged using recycled board saving an estimated 1,000 tonnes of cardboard; and in 2009 Mars made further reductions, for example achieving a 39% reduction in the amount of packaging used in medium-sized Easter eggs which translated to a total saving of 39 tonnes of plastic and 114 tonnes of cardboard, and all the cardboard (with the exception of Galaxy premium) was made from recycled board.
By collaborating on these projects Mars benefits from the expertise of WRAP and the support of FDF, and FDF and WRAP can benefit from Mars’s expertise in business operations and a working business to pilot and trial initiatives that can be transferred.
