The Responsibility of the Food, Drink, Tobacco Industry in Emissions
The food, drink, and tobacco industry is an important but complicated factor in the many critical campaigns we have across the globe to move towards a more sustainable society in the coming decade or two. Due to the large level of grocery sales, food, drink and tobacco are the largest emitters of any retail sub-sector, being responsible for 62 per cent of all emissions.
A look at the UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory data (2019)
1,010,596.226 tonnes of emissions from the Food, Drink, and Tobacco industry in 2019.
Emissions by Pollutant
Carbon Dioxide accounted for 906,610.8405 tonnes of UK emissions in 2019
This is 90% of the Food, Drink, and Tobacco industry emissions.
Non Methane Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emissions followed, accounting for 85,555.97 tonnes of emissions
NMVOCs are emitted to air as combustion products, as vapour arising from petrol and solvent use and several other sources.
A large proportion of emissions are caused either as a result of the activities of people in and around their homes (e.g. domestic solvent use or domestic combustion), or by widespread industrial activities such as small-scale industrial coating processes, dry cleaning shops, and small bakeries, which are present in towns and cities throughout the UK.
Consequently the resulting emissions map is well correlated with population density (source).
This is 8% of the emissions in this sector.
Visualisation of emissions by operator
Data source: https://naei.beis.gov.uk/
What should this mean?
Take a look at British Sugar Plc
Current efficiency
North Energy states that British Sugar is “recognised internationally as one of the most efficient and progressive sugar manufacturers in Europe (source).
They report a 17% reduction in CO2 since 2014.
They are intending to install the world’s first commercially viable production of algae-based animal feed ingredients from CO2 emissions (source).
Plans are now in place to install Livalta’s first pilot plant at British Sugar’s Wissington site in Norfolk in 2022.
The Wissington site is the highest emitter from the 2019 dataset in the Food, Drink, and Tobacco sector with 90,652.17 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
What can we be asking for?
Operators of factories and plants can work on more consideration for the surrounding communities and efficiency in their processes.
Local government and planning authorities should prioritise the maximisation of storage space in areas to reduce the frequency of deliveries, thus taking vehicles off the road.
Investment in innovations from private firms to increase filtration of emissions at source rather than rely on offsetting.