Kellogg has pledged to step up its corporate social responsibility drive, finding that eight out of 10 consumers still say the environmental impact of food is important in their purchasing decisions.
The cereal giant met MPs this month, at an annual breakfast meeting, to urge the Department of Transport to allow trucks to be up to 13% longer. “If we used these longer trucks in the transport of our products, this would mean that we could make huge [greenhouse gas] savings,” Greg Peterson, md of Kellogg UK, told Food Manufacture.
He said that the company was also actively looking at buying an anaerobic digestion facility to decrease the amount of waste that it sends to landfill. Its site in Germany sends 0% of waste to landfill, an ambition which it hopes to apply at its Manchester site.
“We are also going to be one of the first branded manufacturers to use a new British Retail Consortium (BRC) recycling label, which will appear on our products over the summer,” added Peterson. The label is operated by the BRC under a company called On-Pack Recycling Label, while the Waste and Resources Action Programme monitors its effectiveness.
The label provides customers with standardised information on whether packaging can be recycled. Peterson said that Kellogg had also achieved 40% reductions in its packaging. “Some companies call these measures corporate social responsibility, but we think that it just makes good business sense.
“Over the last six months, for example, we have saved thousands of pounds just by urging employees to fully turn off their computers and laptops at the end of the day.”
He estimated that Kellogg’s initiative with Kimberley-Clark to share distribution trucks had taken over 200,000 roads miles off the road to date. And he said it was now using 20% less water at its Manchester site by introducing simple measures such putting smaller nozzels on hoses.