Dairy UK has launched a new campaign to highlight progress on the UK Dairy Roadmap and showcase UK dairy farmers as world leaders in sustainability.
Dubbed ‘It’s What We’re Made Of’, the campaign shines a spotlight on three areas of the roadmap; climate change, biodiversity and plastics and packaging, highlighting the goals achieved so far and the progress on the longer-term targets.
Using a mix of animation and real footage, three thirty-second videos have been created, which will run for ten weeks and are expected to reach 2.7 million impressions.
Judith Bryans, chief executive, Dairy UK explained: “The UK Dairy Roadmap is one of the oldest roadmap initiatives in the agricultural sector, and acts as a public commitment to environmental sustainability by the entire dairy sector. It addresses eight focus areas in which farms and dairies are set sustainability goals for 2025 and beyond. These are climate change and energy, water, landfill, plastics and packaging, waste, biodiversity, soil and air quality.”
“We have been working hard towards the sustainability goals set, with farmers and processors continuing to innovate and improve practices as we strive to meet our industry goal to Net Zero. Now, it’s time for us to share a part of this story, and what we’re made of, with consumers.”
Some key statistics showing the success of the Roadmap include:
Climate change
- 56% of dairy farmers are already taking action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, through steps such as improving energy efficiency and eliminating HCFC refrigerants.
- 88 dairies (over 50 companies) have signed the Climate Change Agreements (CCA) with the UK government and improved their energy efficiency by almost 30% (28.96%) across the dairy industry since 2008.
- Dairy processors in CCAs have reduced energy-related (scope 2) GHG emissions by an average of 28.96% between 2008 and 2020.
- A target to reduce carbon-related energy use at processing sites by 30% by 2030.
- 43% of farmers produce or use renewable energy.
- Arla Dairy in Aylesbury became the first large liquid dairy in the world to become net zero carbon in 2017.
Biodiversity
- 30,000km of hedgerows and 37,000km of grass margins planted under the Campaign for the Farmed Environmentiii – a distance of London to Sydney and back, twice.
Plastics and Packaging Waste
- Plastic milk containers are one of the UK’s most recycled products.
- 78% of plastic HDPE milk bottles have been recycled since 2008 – the average for plastic bottle recycling is 58%
- 89% of tertiary packaging is reused or recycled.[vi]