Dairy industry to go green
Published : May 2008
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has released plans to assist the dairy industry in reducing its impact on the environment.
The plan, entitled The Milk Roadmap, aims to help reduce the environmental impact of dairy products across their lifecycle and has been produced in conjunction with the Dairy Supply Chain Forum Sustainable Consumption and Production Taskforce.
Aims contained in the document include for the dairy farming sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 to 30 per cent by the year 2020, and to use 40 per cent of its energy from renewable sources within the same timescale. Milk processors have also pledged that half of all milk packaging will come from recycled material, and that 70 per cent of non-natural on-farm waste will be recycled or recovered.
The roadmap also encourages major retailers to establish positive relationships with suppliers as well as continuing to cut their own environmental footprints. The document will be reviewed this autumn “to ensure that the targets and evidence remain relevant.”
Dairy UK director general Jim Begg called The Milk Roadmap, “a pioneering collaboration between all links in the supply chain that puts a bottle of milk on the kitchen table, and even beyond – to post-consumer recycling.
“The dairy sector is leading the food industry with this initiative, and we are laying down a benchmark for other products to emulate,” he added.