Caring for our environment

It is commonly accepted that the Earth is affected by the impact of human activity as we go about our daily lives. Today, there is wide recognition of the challenges of Climate Change, in addition, whilst the global population continues to grow, the Earth's resources remain under stress as our global populations grows.

We are concerned about the future of the Earth because like you we care about future generations, which is why we strive to run our business in a responsible manner to meet this need.

We work daily to take due care with the impact we have on the environment as much as we practically can at any given time. We call this responsible management.

In some cases we have a neutral impact on the environment whilst in others we are reducing our impact. Overall our Forever Food Journey is designed to have a net positive impact on the earth over the 2010-2015 period. You can see our targets as you explore the site.

Climate change is a challenge that affects everyone so we all have a role to play in slowing it down. The main cause for rises in temperature is the release of greenhouse gases, like CO₂, into the atmosphere. These come about from human activities - things like industry, transport, waste and energy production.

No one can ignore what's happening and Birds Eye is no exception. We all have to get involved.

For us, that means reducing the immediate negative impact we have in our processes and developing more efficient manufacturing methods. We've already cut our CO₂ emissions significantly: In the UK they're down by 20% compared with 1990 and we're aiming to achieve a 30% overall reduction by the year 2020 across all our manufacturing operations.

We're becoming more efficient in other uses of energy, too. In refrigeration, in air-compression and in our facilities. Even in our homes and offices, simple things like encouraging our people to turn off PC's and recycling to installing energy saving devices for lighting- these all make a positive contribution.

But it's not just about us. We encourage our suppliers to employ the same energy saving solutions throughout their operations, and we want to help you to become more aware of the challenges of climate change whenever we can.

You asked us:

What does Sustainable Development Mean to Birds Eye?

Sustainable development is most commonly defined as meeting the needs of the present without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. That's why we're calling our programme 'Forever Food', we're making sure that the way we produce food for consumers today will allow our children and children's children to harvest the Earth's food resources as well.