Climate change is wreaking havoc and companies are slacking off in their environmental efforts – but it wasn’t all bad news in the fmcg sustainability space this year.
From Arla’s Bovaer PR meltdown to the continued DRS & EPR saga, these were the top sustainability stories of 2024
Supermarkets drop refill and reuse trials
Once touted as a major solution to plastic usage, refillable trials across the main supermarkets have been falling like dominoes this year. In September, Lidl quietly ended a three-store pilot of laundry detergent refill machines.
This followed Asda calling it quits on its four-year trial of refill stores, which had allowed shoppers to stock up on essentials including tea, coffee, rice and pasta at in-store refillable stations, back in July due to ‘operational issues and commercial challenges’.
Others, including Morrisons, M&S and Tesco, have too canned their own trials of refill aisles in recent years, citing lack of appetite, impact on store environment or economic barriers.
But during his Grocer guest editor appearance back in October, Wrap’s head Sebastian Munden warned that “refill and reuse trials must not be dismissed, even when dropped”.
DRS and EPR fiasco
Two of the government’s flagship legislation proposals to tackle packaging waste, the deposit return scheme (DRS) and extended producer responsibility (EPR), have fallen victims to a turbulent change in power and heavyweight industry lobbying.
As The Grocer reported earlier in the year, the launch of a deposit return scheme across the UK will not now go ahead until at least 2028, a whopping three years behind the current, already delayed, schedule. And there are fears the whole UK-wide plan may fall apart after the Welsh government backed out entirely last month.
And while set to go ahead next year, EPR has not faced a shortage of backlash, resulting in several delays and amendments to the guidelines and base costs. The UK governments have now agreed to cede power over the controversial extended producer responsibility programme to producers.
“With EPR expected to cost at least £1.7bn in 2026 alone, it is essential that it delivers value for money and boosts Britain’s recycling rates,” said Jim Bligh, FDF director of corporate affairs and packaging.
“All successful EPR schemes are led by producers, so it is very welcome that the UK’s four governments have decided to follow international best practice.
Groundbreaking anti-deforestation laws in EU and UK postponed
2024 was going to be the year that the global food industry, responsible for one third of all greenhouse gas emissions and a main driver behind both legal and illegal deforestation, was going to be forced to clean up its act.
Such was the goal of the EU’s deforestation regulation (EUDR), a groundbreaking mammoth piece of legislation that was going to force producers and traders of commodities such as soy, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, and cattle, to provide robust evidence that their products were not sourced from areas linked to deforestation. Failure to do so could result in huge fines and products being taken from European markets.
But after months of warnings of unpreparedness from businesses across the most affected countries – think Indonesia, Brazil, and Ivory Coast – as well as in Europe (where the farming lobby staunchly opposed to the bill), the European Commission decided to delay the EUDR by another year.
Similarly, in the UK, the Conservative government proposed an amendment to the Environment Act that also would require companies to clean up their supply chains of deforestation. And despite Labour’s public support for the regulation, no efforts have yet been made to pass the amendment.
Arla’s big Bovaer blow-up
A seemingly innocuous trial of methane-inhibiting cows feed additive Bovaer quickly turned into a PR disaster for Arla in November, with thousands of users on social media platform X calling for a boycott of the dairy giant’s products.
Bovaer – made by Dutch/Swiss life sciences company DSM-Firmenich – is being trialled on 30 farms in the UK in partnership with Tesco, Aldi and Morrisons.
Arla said Bovaer had the potential to reduce methane emissions from cows by an average of 27%. What no one expected was the ensuing social media storm, with Arla, Lurpak and Cravendale trending on X for days alongside videos of consumers pouring various Arla products down the toilet.
There was plenty of what Arla termed “misinformation” behind the social media outcry, as well as outright conspiracy theories, with some people (incorrectly) linking Bovaer to Bill Gates and the supposedly nefarious work of the World Economic Forum.
This all came despite the additive being approved by the FSA in the UK and regulators in 27 other countries around the world.
Arla stresses it will continue with the trial and that the additive is metabolised in a cow and has zero effect on milk. It ultimately sees Bovaer as a key tool in helping reduce emissions from cattle, but after such a backlash – even if based on misinformation – many dairy sector insiders say its future use is now untenable.
Climate change impact on food production
The effects of global warming are continuing to be deeply felt across not just the UK but countries that produce much of Britain’s foods, such as Spain, Morocco and Egypt.
A Met office report said climate change was “wreaking havoc” with the UK’s food security, with record levels of rain and floods recorded in the past year, severely affecting food production and harvests of crucial goods such as potatoes and onions. On the other hand, warmer than usual summers have also impacted crops from olive oil to fresh produce.
Awareness around the topic of food security has massively grown this year, largely due to the farmers’ protests seen earlier in the year, when hundreds of tractors descended upon Westminster (not to be confused with the most recent farmers’ protests linked to inheritance tax).
All eyes will be on Defra and new food security minister Daniel Zeichner as Labour scrambles to put together a national food strategy that tackles the long-term effects of climate change on the food industry.
How sustainability efforts in the food industry are going up in flames
While the food industry becomes more and more politicised – evidenced by the above examples of the several farmers’ protests that took place this year – sustainability professionals across food & retail are feeling increasingly frustrated and burned out. The clock is ticking on myriad climate targets, but progress appears to be stalling – pushing a swathe of senior sustainability leaders to the industry entirely.
The Grocer spoke to several high-profile sustainability whistleblowers for an inside track on how the ‘toxic’ dynamics of the grocery sector are posing a barrier to achieving crucial targets.
They provided their unfiltered views on corporate politicking and lack of green skills across crucial business departments, what can be done internally to support sustainability departments, as well as how government regulation is integral to level the playing field in the race to net zero.
IGD’s new food systems transition plan
On the flip side, the IGD has announced a new industry-wide initiative that aims to bring key players together for the first time to work on a concrete plan for successfully transitioning to net zero by 2050.
The project, spearheaded by the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) in partnership with climate action NGO Wrap and consultancy EY, will see food businesses across the supply chain work together “at pace” in response to decarbonisation goals.
Also known as the Food System Transition Plan, it will consist of both a long-term strategy and framework proposal to 2050, drawing on businesses’ individual knowledge on areas like key emissions drivers, emissions reductions and costs.
It will be backed-up by a robust body of data published by the different key stakeholders – including the British Retail Consortium, the Food & Drink Federation and UKHospitality, as well as the NFU’s sector resilience plans – to help drive alignment and action across the entire food system.
Warmer frozen food temperature standard garners support
Further good news saw the frozen food sector come together en masse to back an overhaul to the current frozen food temperature standards of –18ºC, which have been in place for over 100 years.
Companies including Iceland, Morrisons, Nomad Foods and a number of other logistics, retail and manufacturing players are now pushing for a new standard of –15ºC at which frozen food is stored and transported in a bid to slash energy usage and carbon emissions.
The campaign is being led by the Move to –15ºC Coalition, which has garnered so much support on a global scale that it is looking more and more likely that the new standard could be widely adopted by as early as next year.
Unilever escapes CMA wrath as watchdog closes green claims probe
Finally, one of the biggest sustainability-related stories in fmcg this year turned out to be a distinctively mysterious lack of story. We’re talking about how Unilever escaped the Competition & Markets Authority’s wrath after the watchdog decided to close its nearly year-long investigation into the supplier’s alleged unfounded green claims.
After bashing Unilever publicly for reportedly boasting about its sustainability credentials without proper evidence, making the Magnum maker the poster child of its crackdown on greenwashing practices in the food industry, the CMA quickly closed the probe after taking into account a “range of factors”, it said, “including changes Unilever has made to claims on some of its products and the wider impact of our programme of work on tackling misleading green claims”.
One less headache for Unilever, which has faced heavy criticism for straying away from its sustainability-centric ethos since the apppointment of new CEO Hein Schumacher.
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