Climate Change
Carbon Footprint:
A carbon foot print is defined by the Carbon Trust as 'the total set of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organisation, event or product’.The chart below shows the average amount of CO2 used to produce a litre of different types of drinks including Danone's natural mineral waters.
* In 2007, Groupe Danone developed a tool for measuring the carbon footprint of our products, audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers and certified by the Carbon Trust and ADEME, called Danprint. Today, it provides measurements of the C02 from upstream to downstream on all activities of the group.
Measuring and monitoring our impact enables us to identify the best actions to take to continually reduce our footprint.
The areas we focus on are:
- Production, packaging and transporting our products from source to store
- Energy and water usage – water used in cleaning and rinsing operations and energy used at our bottling facilities
- Packaging ratios - the amount of packaging we use in relation to the total weight of the product content
The chart below illustrates the aspects of production that contribute to the carbon footprint of our products:
Danone has a number of initiatives and strategies in place to reduce the environmental impact at various stages in our products' lifecycle including route and load optimisation, light-weighting, rPET inclusion and energy consumption efficiencies.
Manufacturing:
In recent years Danone Waters has implemented several initiatives to improve energy efficiency and reduce waste during manufacture.
Our Green Plant Initiative has invested €16 million to reduce the impact of our activities and achieved a 16% reduction in water usage, a 19% reduction in energy use and a 76% reduction in industrial waste recovery between 2000 and 2005.
Bottled water requires a relatively low level of energy in its production. Our manufacturing processes represent around 5% of the overall carbon footprint of our bottled water.
ISO 14001
ISO 14001 is an international standard of environmental management. Any organisation that has been awarded this certification has implemented a set of processes that aim to minimize the impact their operations have on the environment. To date, all of Danone’s Evian, Volvic and Badoit manufacturing facilities have been awarded this seal of approval.
Transportation:
Many people believe that transport miles are the primary cause of a product’s carbon footprint, but this is not true.
It is the mode of transport which is a far more important factor than the distance travelled. Danone Waters use very efficient modes of transport and is one of the largest rail freight users of the Channel Tunnel with five trains per week crossing France to our Distribution Centre and over 60% of Evian and Volvic delivered to the warehouses via train. We also use sea transportation for large parts of the journey our waters take from source to consumer. Where road transport is unavoidable, we ensure trucks travel the shortest distance possible and that empty pallets are returned by train.
To find out more about what we are doing as a company in this area please visit the climate change section of the corporate website.