Five ways the dairy industry is boosting its sustainability credentials

Packaging innovations

The dairy sector has seen a glut of initiatives to cut down on plastic packaging in recent years. Take Müller’s move into glass bottles via its Milk & More doorstep delivery service and its efforts to ‘lightweight’ packaging and bring plastic bottle manufacturing in-house.

Others, such as Saputo Dairy UK, have teamed up with organisations like TerraCycle to allow their cheese packaging to be recycled, while Ornua Foods UK reinvented the cheese block last year by changing the shape of its Pilgrims Choice and Tesco own-label cheese to an oblong, reducing plastic use by 40%.

Lancashire-based Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses has gone a step further by devising a fully recyclable polythene made from a single polymer, which is now available across its range, including the cheesemaker’s new brand This is Proper (pictured above). And it’s now also looking to develop the tech even further, using natural alternatives such as seaweed.

Regenerative agriculture

Regenerative farming practices “that work with nature instead of against it” are championed by Henry Dimbleby as a key tool for reducing the farming sector’s emissions in his National Food Strategy.

Lots of dairy businesses are now exploring how these techniques can help them reduce carbon and improve biodiversity.

Arla Foods UK MD Ash Amirahmadi says the dairy co-op is trialling the injection of cow slurry into soil (rather than spreading it on top) as one example of regenerative techniques that can lock carbon underground. Arla is also investing in biodiversity on its farms to attract pollinators and “a more diverse insect population” via its Bee Road project.

Elsewhere, Yeo Valley Organic owner Tim Mead says the brand has launched a new five-year soil carbon programme – where it is trialling multiple carbon sequestration work streams – on 20 farms in its supply chain. In field trials at the Yeo Valley family farm in Somerset, the company says these methods have the potential to lock away 1.5 times more carbon per year than it emits.

Cornwall-based Trewithen Dairy is among a handful of other dairy processors to undertake similar research. MD Francis Clarke says its trial of a minimum tillage and diverse cropping system – which sees it grow a variety of different grasses – has “huge potential” and means the fields promote better biodiversity and require less ploughing.

Cutting carbon

With dairy representing about 3.4% of the earth’s total carbon emissions, the sector is in the midst of widescale carbon reduction plans.

As one of the UK’s largest processors, Müller UK & Ireland has already hit its target to reduce its carbon footprint by 40% on 2015 levels, having implemented a number of key changes to its manufacturing network which are now “in the right locations, use less energy and produce less waste”.

Saputo, meanwhile, is aiming to reduce emissions by 20% by 2025, while Ornua is making solid progress towards achieving a 20% reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030. There are many more like-minded projects across the sector, with new industry targets also set to be published by Dairy UK later this year.

Meanwhile, research on Arla’s farmers’ carbon footprints published in August reveals the dairy co-op is already producing milk with 1.13kg CO2e per kg of milk (around half the global average) on the back of a series of on-farm initiatives.

Renewable energy

Arla has also committed to buying renewable energy directly from the 24% of its farmers that produce their own power on-farm – as part of its commitment to becoming net zero by 2050 – and even trialled the use of cow manure as a fuel for its lorries in 2020.

The likes of Dewlay Cheesemakers and ice cream maker Mackie’s, meanwhile, have invested in wind power to produce the majority of their power needs.

And it’s in dairy companies that can produce their own low carbon power that the sector can make real progress in reducing its impact on the environment, suggests Wyke Farms MD Rich Clothier – a pioneer of renewable energy through its anaerobic digestion and solar operation, which helped it become the first national cheese brand to become fully energy self-sufficient back in 2014.

Embracing innovation

Cows and their much-maligned digestive habits have long been highlighted as a major contributor to the dairy sector’s emissions. According to April’s UN Global Methane Assessment, enteric fermentation represents 32% of the world’s total methane emissions.

But by adding compounds from garlic and extracts of citrus into cow feed, a Welsh-developed supplement made by Swiss startup Mootral claims to be able to cut enteric emissions by up to 38%, while also “naturally increasing yield and enabling the production of climate-friendly milk and beef”.

Other similar feed additive projects include Dutch corporation Royal DSM’s Bovaer supplement, which in tests earlier this year at Wageningen Livestock Research in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, delivered emission reductions of between 27% and 40% in 64 cows under trial.

But it’s not just in feed where the dairy sector is seeking to reduce emissions. The UK’s AHDB announced a new genetics project in August, designed to help breed more environmentally-friendly cows. EnviroCow gathers information in an index scoring cows on the best environmental credentials.

This article is part of The Dairymen - our annual guide to the dairy industry that’s packed with insight and analysis on all the latest trends. To read the full report, subscribe here.