Sustainability a critical requirement for 21st century Ireland

IF YOU are an Irish food or drinks company and you want to pitch your product to the likes of McDonald’s or Unilever, you will need to be able to prove that your business takes the concept of sustainability seriously.

Research by Pricewaterhouse-Coopers for Bord Bia has shown sustainability is becoming a critical requirement for anyone who wants to do business with these mega players as well as supermarkets like Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury.

The global population is set to increase by more than 2bn by 2050, and so the world will need to produce 70% more food from increasingly limited resources.

At the same time, every country in the world is under growing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we are to stave off the worst of climate change, which in itself poses a serious threat to food production.

And so, increasingly, retailers are demanding that the food and drink they sell is produced with the least damage possible to the environ-ment. The future of food is all about “sustainable intensification”, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. And sustainability, with its focus on minimal wastage, also leads to reduced costs in the supply chain and so is an area that an aspiring Irish food or drinks company would be foolish to ignore.

Bord Bia is all too aware that Ireland has much to gain from the growing demand for sustainably produced food. “We have natural advantages in this area. Already, we are seen as the green island and so we need to build on that so we can become world leaders in the area of sustainability,” said Jim O’Toole, director of Bord Bia’s meat and livestock division.

Recent research by the EU Commission shows Ireland hasone of the lowest carbon footprints for dairy and beef production in the EU.

Cranfield University in the UK also conducted studies on the water footprint of Irish beef and dairy production and found the Irish industry has one of the lowest water stress measurements in the world.

But, there is more that the Irish food industry must do if Irish food and drink exports, which are already worth over €9bn are to expand to meet the world’s ballooning food needs.

To this end, Bord Bia has set the ambitious goal that by 2014, 75% of all Irish food and drink exports will be sourced from farms and food businesses that have signed up to a voluntary sustainability programme called Origin Green.

By 2016, they want all food and drink exporters to be using the Origin Green logo on their products and for it to become an internationally recognised mark of quality and low carbon footprint.

So far, 245 companies have signed up and 12 have already completed certification.

“We reduce carbon footprint by looking at usage of raw materials, how ingredients are sourced, where packaging comes from,” said Mr O’Toole.

“We also look at the social sustainability aspect, the healthiness of the product, salt content, nutrition. Then there’s also how much waste is generated, whether water is used efficiently and we can also introduce heat recovery programmes which again serve to reduce a company’s energy demands.

“The danger for big companies like Nestle and Unilever is that some producers will say they are doing things but they are not doing them at all. Origin Green is a programme that measures, maps out, and verifies what all these companies have done and that’s the assurance that the big players need.”

Companies that have come on board with Origin Green include Carbery and Glenisk Dairies. Co Offaly-based Glenisk, which sells organic produce, has already ensured that its energy needs are generated from 100% renewable sources.

“We began auditing our carbon footprint in 2008 and are achieving reductions of approximately 10% each year in terms of emissions,” said Glenisk’s Vincent Cleary.

“We work with Ecocert to actively reduce our energy, waste, and water consumption and have achieved dramatic results this year on all three fronts. In particular, we have managed to reduce our core energy usage despite producing significantly higher volumes of products this year to meet increased customer demand.

“We have our own wind turbine at the plant and supplement our energy consumption using wind energy provided by Airtricity. We manage waste water through an innovative reed bed system, and we completed a major upgrade of this system, by adding live bacteria to our waste water as a pre-treatment mechanism designed to further biodegrade waste. This innovative approach is now being adopted by some of the more progressive local county councils.”

Carbery Diaries, meanwhile, plans to reduce its carbon footprint by 20%-25% over the next few years. It has also introduced a “greener diary farms” project with suppliers and slashed the amount of waste going to landfill.

Origin Green may have initially began with food and drink companies, but as the companies changed their way of doing business, the momentum began to trickle down to their own suppliers, such as farmers.

There are now moves under way in Bord Bia to formally extend the concept of sustainability to farms so that sustainability can be benchmarked from farm to fork.

For example, by the end of next month, Bord Bia will have carbon-footprinted 30,000 beef farms. Ireland is the first country in the world to take such steps at a national level and the hope is that the Irish food exporters will reap serious reward in the medium to long term.