Birds Eye lines up biomass projects
In a bid to significantly reduce its carbon output and water consumption, one of the UK’s leading food brands Birds Eye has set up a key green investment strategy.
The sustainability programme named Forever Food will see carbon emissions cut by 30% from 1990 to 2020 and water consumption reduced by 20% since 2007’s figures. By 2015 the firm is also expected to stop all food waste being sent to UK landfill sites.
According to Peter Hajipieris, Birds Eye’s chief technical sustainability and external affairs officer, the company has already lined up a number of projects in order to meet these targets.
‘We are looking at technologies and processes that can improve efficiency, such as recirculating oil when flash frying, but we are also analysing different renewable energy technologies,’ said Hajipieris. ‘One option we are looking at is a biomass system that could be partly fuelled by packaging waste.’
In addition, the installation of biodigesters looks highly likely in order to enable Birds Eye to produce energy from unavoidable food waste.
Birds Eye is now developing groundbreaking ways of saving energy from the production of its frozen fish fingers. Hajipieris said: ‘We found when we were looking at reducing packaging levels that making the size of the box of fish fingers smaller also cuts the energy its take to freeze them, as they contain less air that you have to cool.’
The sustainability programme named Forever Food will see carbon emissions cut by 30% from 1990 to 2020 and water consumption reduced by 20% since 2007’s figures. By 2015 the firm is also expected to stop all food waste being sent to UK landfill sites.
According to Peter Hajipieris, Birds Eye’s chief technical sustainability and external affairs officer, the company has already lined up a number of projects in order to meet these targets.
‘We are looking at technologies and processes that can improve efficiency, such as recirculating oil when flash frying, but we are also analysing different renewable energy technologies,’ said Hajipieris. ‘One option we are looking at is a biomass system that could be partly fuelled by packaging waste.’
In addition, the installation of biodigesters looks highly likely in order to enable Birds Eye to produce energy from unavoidable food waste.
Birds Eye is now developing groundbreaking ways of saving energy from the production of its frozen fish fingers. Hajipieris said: ‘We found when we were looking at reducing packaging levels that making the size of the box of fish fingers smaller also cuts the energy its take to freeze them, as they contain less air that you have to cool.’
