Britvic Soft Drinks Limited recognises that all of our operations and the actions of our employees can have some impact on the environment. Therefore, we have undertaken environmental impact assessments to highlight those areas where we consider our impact on the environment to be most significant. From reviewing these assessments, programmes of continuous improvement and best practice have been introduced which are aimed at reducing the overall impact of the issues concerned.
We have established a company Environmental Policy and reproduced our Health, Safety and Environmental Policy Statement of Intent.
Britvic has adopted an Environmental Management System which is certified to the international standard ISO 14001 and covers all manufacturing sites (except Huddersfield) and our technical centre. All these sites are periodically audited and verified by an external third party to ensure that compliance against the standard is being maintained. (The Certificate Number is EMS 522171).
Britvic factories are operated to the highest standards of quality and food safety. We have maintained ISO9001 accredited systems since the early 1990’s. More recently all our production sites have gone through the process of obtaining accreditation by EFSIS to the BRC Global standard – Food.
Since 2005 the soft drinks sector has had to obtain operating permits for large manufacturing sites from the Environment Agency in accordance with the Pollution Prevention Control Regulations 2000. These require us to be able to demonstrate that we are using the "best available techniques" and pursuing a programme of continuous improvement in managing energy usage, emissions, water usage, wastewater (effluent) and waste management. In all these areas Britvic can demonstrate significant year on year improvements.
Britvic has joined the government backed Climate Change Levy Agreement, which requires organisations in certain sectors of industry to make specified reductions in their energy consumption by given timescales. We are currently making a reduction of 18.6% against our primary specific energy consumption target, plus a reduction of 22.8% against our target for carbon emissions per tonne of product. This equates to an over achievement of approximately 40,000 tonnes of carbon credits. To ensure the information we submit is accurate the CCL scheme employs external auditors to verify our submissions. Their most recent audit of Britvic took place in May 2007, where our submitted energy usage and production volumes were verified.
Water management is crucial to Britvic as it is used both as an ingredient and a process aid for cleaning and sterilising. The management of its quality is of paramount importance as a number of products may contain up to 100% water.
To assist in the efficient use of this natural resource, all our production sites are committed to managing their water consumption. Each year targets are set to improve our water ratio. This is measured by making comparisons between the tonnes of product that we produce against our water consumption which is measured in cubic metres. Over the past six years this ratio has been reduced by 14.6%, and our effluent ratio has been reduced by 20.0%.
Did you know that Britvic has reduced its waste to landfill by 72% since 2002 and that 10000 tonnes of material has already been taken out of our primary packaging.