Environment Awards: Best Environmental Business Award: Arla Foods

EVERY major firm is looking to cut its carbon emissions – but it is the truly holistic approach taken by Arla Foods that helped it collect this year’s Best Environmental Business award.

The dairy giant, which produces milk, cheese and other products for major supermarket chains as well as owning major brands such as Lurpak, Anchor and Cravendale, has been working to reduce emissions for years.

But for the first time last year, the firm – which has a huge dairy in Stourton, Leeds – unveiled a major environmental strategy which also incorporates goals for the farmers who supply the business.

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Efficiencies and innovations have already seen carbon emissions cut by a third in the past five years. By 2012 all Arla’s waste will have been diverted from landfill. By 2015 water usage will be down 20 per cent. By 2020 a third of its energy will come from renewable sources. The list goes on and on.

“I think really this is just what businesses of the size and scale of Arla need to be doing,” said Robin Dearden, Arla’s environment, health and safety manager for the UK, who is based at Stourton.

“There are strong moral and ethical reasons behind it, there’s a lot of demand from the public, from pressure groups, and from Government for firms to be taking these steps – and there are some very good economic reasons too.

“We now have major long-term targets and a real over-arching matching strategy.”

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As an example, Mr Dearden says the next new dairy that Arla opens will be “carbon zero”.

“Once you have this mindset ingrained, these big strategic decisions then follow,” he said.

Working with the farmers who supply the business is equally important to Arla.

“We don’t own the farms, but 80 per cent of our business’s footprint is from the farms. It’s methane emissions from cows; it’s fertiliser usage and energy usage,” Mr Dearden added.

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“You can’t go after the farmers with a big stick, so we’ve been running workshops about how to use fertilisers better, how to reduce energy usage.

“It’s about using the ‘carrot’ approach, working with them and helping them see the benefits.”

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