Kingsmill

We're shrinking our carbon footprint

At Kingsmill we have made a promise to reduce our carbon footprint and we are pleased to have been working closely with the Carbon Trust. We are delighted that Kingsmill are the first bread brand to use the Carbon Label. We have measured our carbon footprint across your favourite loaves and now know what drives our footprint and we can see exactly where we can make a difference.

We measured the carbon emissions at all stages in the process - from growing wheat & other ingredients, through the production and distribution process, to how the consumer uses the bread and how the packaging and any bread waste is disposed of.

Going forwards, our journey continues - we have plans in place to deliver further reductions in manufacturing and distribution, to ensure we achieve our commitment to continue to reduce our carbon footprint and with it, our overall environmental impact. 

What is a carbon footprint?

A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular, climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day to day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation and disposal.

Kingsmill worked with the Carbon Trust to establish a detailed product carbon footprint for a loaf of our bread from growing the wheat that makes the flour through to how the consumer uses the loaf and the final disposal of any waste

Having checked our calculations, the Carbon Trust has independently certified our results and the reduction we have achieved and allowed us to use their Carbon Reduction Label on our packaging. The Carbon Reduction Label tells you that we have made a clear commitment to reduce the carbon footprints of our loaves over the next two years and that the Carbon Trust will hold us to this promise - we must achieve reductions again in two years time to be able to retain the Carbon Reduction Label.

We have measured the carbon footprint of your favourite loaves - by looking carefully at everything involved in the loaf, including sourcing raw materials, the bakery process, distribution, and in home consumption, we can figure out how we can continue to reduce carbon emissions.

Our carbon footprint

Your favourite Kingsmill loaves are Soft White, Tasty Wholemeal and 50/50. We've worked with the Carbon Trust using nationally recognised standards to calculate our carbon footprint for these loaves by:

• Looking at all stages in our supply chain - from the wheat that is milled to make flour, sourcing all our other ingredients, baking bread and getting on to the retailer's shelf, to how the loaf is used in the home, and how any waste is dealt with.
• Establishing the energy consumption involved in each of these stages and converting this into carbon emissions produced for each stage for each product.

Adding up these carbon emissions to give our total carbon footprint for your favourite loaves.

Where does it all come from?

Since 2009 we have been able to identify how much of our carbon footprint is generated by each key stage, giving us the opportunity to target our future carbon reduction plans.  The details below are for Soft White, but the breakdown for Tasty Wholemeal and 50:50 is very similar.

Our carbon promise

At Kingsmill we have made a promise to reduce our carbon footprint and we are delighted that we have made a significant reduction in the carbon footprint of your three favourite Kingsmill loaves.

We continue to invest in new vehicles which reduce carbon and other engine exhaust emission levels through their streamlined body shape which gives optimum aerodynamic efficiency.  Our objective is to have a fleet to be proud of that's fuel efficient with low emission levels.  We have also implemented other initiatives such as route tracking and automatic engine cut-off when idling.  To influence driver behaviour we have also implemented SAFED (safe and fuel-efficient) training for our drivers.

We know that energy use has a huge impact on our environmental footprint and we are constantly looking at ways to reduce our energy use. All our bakeries have comprehensive energy reduction plans and we are continuing to replace older ovens and other manufacturing equipment with more efficient models - energy efficiency and environmental impact are key considerations in our purchasing decisions.

We are working hard to reduce waste across the business and are currently implementing a zero waste to landfill programme across our bakeries - a key strand of this is to reduce the amount of waste we actually produce, to increase the amount of waste that is recycled and to work to eliminate waste to landfill.

We are starting to make changes and have lots more planned...

We have started replacing our older, less efficient ovens with new ones, which will reduce our carbon footprint considerably when baking our fresh tasty loaves by over 20%

We are taking steps to reduce the amount of electricity we use in bakeries, from changing to energy efficient lighting to reducing the amount of compressed air we use

We are investing in more fuel efficient lorries and using diesel additives which produce fewer emissions

We're making more of our loaves locally - over the last two years this change has saved our trucks from driving an extra 900,000 miles

In the supply chain, Kingsmill has worked with its flour supplier to deliver more flour by rail. We now use rail transport instead of lorries to deliver flour to our bakeries in Glasgow and Cardiff reducing our road travel by 500,000 miles per year!