Kraft cuts food manufacturing waste by half

20-Feb-2012 - Last updated on 06-Aug-2021 at 10:01 GMT

Kraft’s Banbury site, home of Kenco coffee, became the first to achieve zero waste to landfill in the UK and Ireland

Kraft Foods has cut manufacturing waste by half across its global business over the past seven years.

Christine McGrath, global sustainability vice president at Kraft Foods, said: “We’re waging war on waste, one plant at a time. Our strategy is simply: generate less waste and find new uses for the waste we do produce.”

Kraft’s Banbury site became the first to achieve zero waste to landfill in the UK and Ireland. The achievement was particularly significant because Banbury was the firm’s largest instant coffee plant, producing about 90M jars of Kenco instant coffee per year, a spokesman told FoodManufacture.co.uk.

The plant had also reduced energy use by 21% over the seven years by using manufacturing by-products as an energy resource, said the spokesman. For example, the Banbury facility burns coffee grounds to generate electricity.

This offsets the use of non-renewable energy resources and reduces the amount of coffee waste sent to landfill.

Waste streams

“The plant has worked hard to find the best commercially viable ways to reuse and recycle as many waste streams as possible,” said the spokesman.

In addition to cutting energy consumption, the firm reduced water usage by 10% at its Banbury site.

Kraft’s Bournville Cadbury facility had also cut waste by switching from using single-use paperboard trays to reusable plastic trays for its Cadbury Heroes and Roses confectionery lines. This had saved 1,000t worth of cardboard boxes. The new trays can be recycled after several years' use, the spokesman said.

He attributed the savings to “… changing [employees’] behaviour, business practices and culture and by creating new partnerships to turn waste into something of value”.

Biomass power

In Austria, the firm’s Vienna coffee plant sent used coffee bean husks to a biomass power plant.

In the US, three of its California facilities sent food waste such as corn skins for use in animal feed.

The firm said: “Conducting business in a way that respects the intersection of environmental, social and economic responsibility is the right thing to do and it makes good business sense.”

In 2007, Kraft Foods forged a partnership with multi-national waste and packaging firm Sonoco Recycling to cut waste across all its sites.

Currently, 36 facilities in 13 countries send no waste to landfill. Of the 36 plants that have achieved zero waste, 24 are in Europe and 12 are in North America.