As with any business, we face issues that impact our ability to grow our business. We regularly monitor the external landscape and engage with internal and external stakeholders to ensure that our sustainability strategy is addressing these material issues.
We have an established risk management framework to identify, assess, mitigate and monitor the risks we face as a business. Plastic packaging and calorie reduction are recognised as key priorities. More recently we have witnessed an increase in interest in carbon reduction and water scarcity, alongside the impact of our supply chain on our environment and our communities. We recognise the importance of a diverse and inclusive workforce to grow and thrive in a global market as well as playing an active role in the communities we serve. We regularly measure our own progress against these issues and apply an external lens by aligning our progress to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
We have set ambitious targets accredited by the Science Based Targets initiative and are publicly committed to reducing our operations emissions by 50% and our upstream and downstream emissions by 35% by 2025. Britvic will be carbon neutral by 2050. We are fully committed to our science-based targets and we are exploring a range of opportunities to reduce our carbon emissions through three main activities: improving energy efficiency in our operations; utilising low carbon technology and/or energy sources; and working in partnership with our key suppliers to reduce carbon emissions in our supply chain.
Water is our most important ingredient and a precious shared resource which is coming under increasing pressure across the markets in which we operate. It is vital to the ecosystems, local economies and communities in which we live and work, and especially to growing many of our ingredients. Constraints on the quality and quantity of the water available could limit our ability to operate effectively. Managing our impact on water, and being good water stewards, is one of our highest environmental priorities. At Britvic we take our responsibility for strong water management seriously and we are looking at ways to improve our water stewardship. We continually improve our water efficiency across our manufacturing sites, ensuring closed loops wherever possible.
Our health strategy focuses on the role we can play in providing a wide range of soft drinks to suit all needs and tastes. We don't believe in taking away choice or telling consumers what to do, we believe in creating fantastic tasting drinks that mean there is no choice to make between drinks that taste better and are better for you.
While we believe there is always a place to enjoy full sugar drinks, we recognise that obesity levels around the world are on the rise, and over-consumption of high fat, high sugar foods that are high in calories could be a contributory factor. We are committed to playing our part in addressing this challenge and our health strategy focuses on removing calories.
We are making progress against this target through our health strategy that focuses on three key activities:
- Reformulating our drinks with no compromise on taste or quality.
- Continual innovation in our products and ranges.
- Using the power of our brands responsibly to educate and motivate consumers.
We are proud of the strong portfolio we have across our markets that offer healthier choices and support our ambition of helping our consumers to live healthier lives.
We have set annual targets against this for many years with a 2025 target of fewer than 30 calories per 250ml serve.
At Britvic we are taking proactive steps to reduce the environmental impact of plastic packaging and future-proofing ‘beyond plastic’. With the growth in packaging has come an unintended consequence, packaging waste. More needs to be done about it and as an industry leader, we play a crucial role in dealing with this issue. We are a trusted partner to our customers through our engagement and commitment to finding the packaging solutions as we aim to create a world where great packaging never becomes waste, and work towards creating a circular economy. We also work in close collaboration with our industry peers, government and the waste management sectors to improve infrastructure and systems to promote better material recovery, and as part of this we advocate for an industry run Deposit Return Scheme.
We are working on solutions that go ‘Beyond the Bottle’, by delivering drinks via innovative tap and dispense technology, so that consumers can reuse and refill their own bottles and reduce plastic waste.
Our suppliers range from orange farmers in Spain to data analysts in London, advertising agencies in Brazil, and can converters and filling line manufacturers around the world. They are diverse in terms of the products and services they offer and by geography, culture and size. We welcome and celebrate their diversity which helps us be more innovative and enables us to help more consumers enjoy life’s everyday moments. We are always keen to share our expertise with our suppliers so we can all benefit and grow together.
To grow and thrive in a global and expanding market, against ever stronger competition, we need diverse talent with fresh thinking and bold ideas. It is this talent that sets us up to get ahead and stay ahead. We know that diverse ideas and insights significantly improve how we work, not only to improve our speed, agility and responsiveness, but also to create greater efficiencies to fuel our growth. Entirely consistent with our fervent wish to create a better tomorrow, we recognise the importance of employee health and wellbeing and have created Working Well principles that are embedded across Britvic. We know that great talent decides to join and stay with companies that offer a positive contribution to society, companies that value non-financial performance alongside financial, and companies that want to give back and are unafraid to lead with their heart as well as their head. To attract and retain the very best talent it is critical that we place a premium on creating and sustaining a truly inclusive culture.