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CSR Recycled Courtesy of The One Foundation

Thanks to our friends (and clients) at The One Foundation (www.onedifference.org), we are once again hosting the awesome CSR Recycled blog of their Head of CSR, Angi Lewis… Enjoy!

CSR Recycled
A round up of CSR and environmental news: 16 – 29 Oct 09

Enjoy your burgers while you can - Lord Stern, former adviser to the government on the economics of climate change, has said people will have to consider turning vegetarian to help reduce global carbon emissions. Eating meat could become as socially unacceptable as drink-driving. “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resource.” Farmed ruminant animals, including cattle and sheep, are thought to be responsible for up to a quarter of “man-made” methane emissions worldwide. Cartoonist Steve Bell’s take on this is attached.

The Walmart influence - Asda’s suppliers will be judged according to a UK version of Wal-Mart’s packaging scorecard from early 2010. Asda’s parent company Wal-Mart began using a packaging scorecard in the US in February 2008, designed to help its buyers make decisions that were “good for business, customers and the environment”. The scorecard evaluates packaging against a range of criteria, including greenhouse gases, substrate material choices and chemical composition.

Greener Tetra - Tetra Pak is rolling out the FSC logo on 75% of its cartons in the UK and Ireland. Tetra Pak will boost its supply of FSC-certified cartons from the 200m available globally in 2008 to 1.5bn packs in the UK and Ireland alone. The launch is part of Tetra Pak’s bid to attain certified traceability along the entire supply chain, from the sourcing of raw materials through to recycling and recovery. Tetra Pak is also on track to reduce its carbon emissions by 10% by 2010.

Tesco’s on compostable packaging – Tesco has declared it “does not see the value” in using packs that can only be industrially composted, siting the problems faced by Local Authorities when existing recycling schemes are contaminated.

Regardless of party politics - pressure on the packaging industry to reduce its carbon impact looks set to increase under a Tory government with the landfill tax set to rise beyond current projections. The policy statement was in response to the government’s plans to create a ‘zero-waste’ Britain, which could include a ban on recyclable materials going to landfill.
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The road to a zero-carbon business - Tesco has revealed ambitious targets to cut the carbon footprint of its entire supply chain by 30% by 2020 as part of long-term plans to become a zero-carbon business by 2050. In the short term, Tesco’s key consumer-facing measure will be to introduce a new form of BOGOF deal called ‘Buy One Get One Free - Later’ in which consumers will be able to pick up the free product when they need it, rather than when purchasing the first product.

Universal phone charger could save 13.6 million tons of CO2 - at last a universal mobile charger has been approved by the International Telecommunication Union that will be available to manufacturers to adopt as they roll out new phones. Sony Ericsson has already committed to launch with new products in 2010. 51,000 tons of redundant chargers are manufactured each year, and the universal charger could displace many of those. A reduction in e-waste should result, plus a cut in standby power consumption by mobile phones by 50%.

Diet Coke PET bags - Coca-Cola is working with New York stylist Patricia Field to produce a reusable bag made entirely from recycled PET bottles. The bag is aimed at Diet Coke’s young female target market, and can be folded into a small pouch as an alternative to a plastic shopping bag. It’s available at Boots stores across the UK where it is being given away free to customers who buy two 500ml bottles of Diet Coke.

London recycled - Boris Johnson is considering plans to convert rubbish into energy as part of plans to save at least £100m in refuse collection and disposal costs. Waste generated by Londoners could be used to generate enough electricity to power up to 2m homes and provide heat for 625,000 houses. Creating gas from the rubbish which could be used for heating or generating electricity could also cut London’s carbon dioxide emissions by 1.2m tonnes and reduce emissions of another greenhouse gas, methane.

Beware the bourbons - a total of 437 council workers have filled in an online survey about biscuit-related injuries on what has turned out to be a promotional website from Northern Foods. Reports in the Daily Mail have said that some district councils have started organising supervised tea breaks as a result.