Manufacturing sector sustainability report

Background:

The increase in awareness on environmental sustainability has grown rapidly over last 10 years resulting in greater scrutiny on products consumed. As community concerns grow, milk manufacturers are being asked to demonstrate greater environmental responsibility/transparency.

Dairy Australia took on the responsibility of producing a report that details the use of resources in dairy processing with case studies to demonstrate how the processing companies are becoming more efficient in their resource use.

Project objective:

As Australia and the world moves towards a carbon constrained economy, the establishment of benchmarks and best management practices are becoming common. This report is well placed to develop these benchmarks in more detail for theprocessing sector. One of the most significance outcomes is to demonstrate an industry commitment to resource efficiency and setting of internal and national benchmarks.

Project scope:

The sustainability report will follow the principles sent out by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for reporting for the Food Industry. The first step will be to get agreement from processing companies on the indicators that will be reported on, and then collect data and case studies and collate them in a report.

The format of the report will be decided by the companies and Dairy Australia. The steering committee will be guided by similar reports produced by other agricultural sectors and major food companies like Nestle, Unilever and Kraft.  

Outcomes/benefits:

Being able to demonstrate environmental responsibility will play an important role in dairy industry sustainability.

The major outcome of this work is to bring together and promote the work done by the industry to become more sustainable, through the publication of case studies and measurable indicators showing the resource use of the industry.

These indicators can then be used as benchmarks for the industry to set improvement targets. It also highlights how the industry is working together to improve and promote dairy as a sustainable food supply.

More information:

For more information, please contact Neil van Buuren, Dairy Australia Program Manager Resource Management and Technology.