Cadbury recently calculated the "Carbon Footprint" of Cadbury Dairy Milk, one of the UK's favorite chocolates!
How we started carbon footprinting
We have been reporting our corporate carbon footprint for a number of years and are proud supporters of the Carbon Disclosure Project. Our journey to measure the carbon footprint of a bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk began with our desire to understand in more detail how we contribute to greenhouse gas emissions such as CO2 along our broader supply chain - and see how we can reduce our environmental impact. We had been working with the Carbon Trust2 in the UK for the last many years looking at ways to reduce our use of energy and carbon emissions. Recently, they told us they wanted to test a draft product carbon footprinting standard, developed in partnership with Defra and BSI British Standards. We grabbed the opportunity and became one of the few leading companies testing and improving the standard.
Why we think it's important
Approaching the environment from the perspective of our brands just seems like a logical thing to do! Developing this methodology is important for us - not just to have a common industry wide standard in the UK to enable public understanding and benchmarking - but also to apply the same to products and processes within our global business. This carbon footprinting work becomes even more relevant in light of our Purple Goes Green
commitments, which build on an environmental programme that has been in place for the last 15 years.
How we did it
Over the course of late 2006 and 2007 we worked together with the Carbon Trust to determine the carbon footprint of a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk. Our study included the entire supply chain from agriculture through manufacturing to final distribution to customers. In a nutshell, we have measured the energy and fuels used and other greenhouse gas emissions at all stages of the supply chain (from farm to plate) including emissions from agriculture, transport, packaging and waste streams. To gather this data, we worked with our suppliers (in the UK and abroad) and used publicly available data given by the Carbon Trust where appropriate. A copy of the Carbon Trust methodology followed for this work can be found on their website www.carbontrust.co.uk.
Challenges we faced
Our intention was to learn about our carbon footprint whilst at the same time developing the methodology to create a process that can be replicated for our numerous brands globally. Like most pioneers, we did have moments where the path ahead was unclear and we had to pause to define it! Globalisation of our supply chain means that raw materials may be sourced from multiple locations with suppliers ranging in maturity and size, which made data gathering quite complicated! Even though none of these hurdles proved impossible, we kept returning to a number of common issues, namely data availability, data integrity when it is available and cost in terms of money, time and resources spent to gather the data.
1 Carbon Trust defines "carbon footprint" as "The total set of greenhouse gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by an [individual, event, organisation, product] expressed as CO2e."
2 The Carbon Trust is an independent company set up by government in response to the threat of climate change, to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy by helping organisations reduce their carbon emissions and by developing commercial low carbon technologies. The Carbon Trust works with UK business and the public sector through its work in five complementary areas: insights, solutions, innovations, enterprises and investments. Together these help to explain, deliver, develop, create and finance low carbon enterprise.