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.

We're working hard to reduce our packaging, and make sure it's as environmentally-friendly as it can be. To do this, we're working with the UK government's Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), finding ways to minimise the amount of cardboard, paper and plastic we use to bring Forever Food to your table.

As a result of our efforts, our primary packaging (that's the packaging consumers take home), is already 93% recyclable. Over 80% of it comes from sustainable sources, and 9% of our cartons are made from recycled board. But there's more to packaging than paper.

We've also reduced the amount of plastic we use, in a way that won't compromise it's primary purpose - protecting your food. For example, we use an extremely thin type of plastic film to make the 2lb bags that hold our field-fresh peas. Annually, in comparison to other retailers, we save enough film to cover 30 football pitches.

And the carton we use for our Fish Fingers is designed so that it is 2g lighter than the average 300g box (based on WRAP data). That means we can save over 27 tonnes of cardboard each year - but we're aiming to make even greater savings. By 2012, we want to have reduced our Ready Meal, Fish and Poultry packaging by 15%.

You can help cut down the impact of waste cardboard and plastic in the world around us. Make sure you recycle our packaging as often as you 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.