London 2012 to miss its environmental targets?

London 2012 claimed the Games will be the most sustainable in recent history. However, a Going for Green report claims a lack of electric vehicles, air pollution and renewable electricity targets were areas of concern.

The report praised London's 2012's approach to mapping its carbon footprint and its aim to reuse or recycle 90% of temporary materials.

Not securing more electric vehicles for the Olympic fleet was a "missed opportunity", the committee's report concludes.

It is still not clear how carbon emissions from travel to London will be reduced and a target on renewable electricity during the staging phase of the Games is unlikely to be met, the report states.

London's air quality, which has also not improved as hoped since 2005, is also said to be a "particular concern".

Business leaders 'unhappy' about changes to CRC

The government announced changes to the Carbon Reduction Commitment as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review.  These changes see the cessation of the process whereby tax revenue generated from the carbon pricing scheme are recycled back in to green projects.  The £1 billion revenue generated each year will now be contributing to reducing the deficit.  Business is concerned as this was not communicated in advance and it was felt that it was more of a “stealth tax” than a contributor to improving upon carbon reduction or energy efficiency schemes.  It is understood that companies will now have to pay £12 per tonne of carbon dioxide they emit and this is likely to increase to £14 from 2013.

Water in Your Supply Chain

Around 100 people attended the IGD “Water in Your Supply Chain” conference on 21 October when IGD launched its new guide to water in grocery supply chains. This new guide is available free and is designed to help food and grocery companies assess the impact of, and better manage the water-related risks they face. It was put together by an industry working group consisting of major grocery retailers, manufacturers and primary producers, many of whom attended the conference.

A number of presentations were made that discussed the challenges and solutions facing businesses today as they try to reduce their water footprint. The panel of speakers agreed that the journey to reduce water risks within business had started but that there was still some way to go. One area touched upon was the interaction between farmers and their clients as well as amongst farmers themselves.

Mike Barry, Head of Sustainable Business for M&S; emphasised the benefits of providing a forum within which farmers are able to discuss their successes and learn from one another. M&S provide such forums with an annual sustainability conference to which their farmers are invited and with six additional events per year at which farmers can discuss the more practical elements of implementing improvements. Annie Graham, Head of Brand Sustainability for Sainsbury’s; provided an example of how one of their potato suppliers, Greenvale, had achieved particular success with their innovative root vegetable washing system, Project Cascade. The changes introduced resulted in a reduction from 55,000 gallons to 10,000 gallons of average daily water use.

Andrew Clark, Head of Policy Services at the NFU, emphasised the need to ensure that the buyers of farmer’s produce cooperated to ensure that a single set of guidelines and a single standard was set for them to follow. This was further supported by Dr David Tickner, Head of Freshwater Programmes for the WWF, who said that he believed that there were two main areas where business could effectively work together; firstly in the construction of industry wide metrics and the definition of certain standards and secondly by cooperating at specific locations where there is water scarcity or water risk, Lake Naivasha for example.

The Ethical Landscape – Preparing for change

In recent months there have been various trends emerging in food ethics:

· Accreditations organisations have broadened their reach to include many more parts the supply chain and are beginning to compete
· Consumers are beginning to question the validity of ethical marques (e.g. Free Range, Organic etc.)
· More businesses are creating greater competitive advantage through use of ethical marques
· Differentiation for “value” brands is more difficult in the current economic climate.
· Ethics in food has become subject to greater media scrutiny and government attention
· Many Foodservice businesses have developed sophisticated strategies around ethics in their supply chain
· New accreditation schemes for ethical food are emerging and existing accreditation schemes are developing

Our Objective is to provide the foodservice operators with an update of the ethical debate in foodservice and greater clarity around legislative and consumer trends ethical trading and to help the foodservice supply chain develop their strategy towards ethics in foodservice

The proposed content of the event will be:

Ethical Marques update; Ethical Sourcing update; Consumer and customer attitudes and trends; Ethical and cultural issues across the supply chain; accreditation for small producers and operators

For any comments of any input, please email events@footprint-forum.com