It’s a four-day week for those lucky enough to be living in England. We’ve therefore squeezed the best sustainability stories into our usual digestible format for you; so make a brew, sit back and enjoy tales of grazing cattle, gene editing of crops and a new research grant to look at the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss on the brewing sector.
Speaking of brews, and in case you missed it, Scotland has edged closer to introducing a 25p charge on single-use cups. A consultation on the so-called ‘latte levy’ highlights how use of disposable cups has increased from 200 million in 2018 to 388.7 million in 2021/22. The charge should encourage uptake of reusable cups and reduce the number of single-use cups.
The likes of the Foodservice Packaging Association (FPA) and the Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC), as ever, are not happy about it. They feel that retailers are already “taking action” and the UK-wide mandatory takeback scheme, proposed under extended producer responsibility for packaging (pEPR) and aimed at improving recycling rates, should be introduced first. Lifting recycling rates of these cups above single digits would be good, but reducing them would surely be better (as per the waste hierarchy).
More on that, as well as Waitrose’s move to reintroduce disposable cups for its free-coffee-loving shoppers, in Monday’s Plastics Package. The upmarket supermarket has announced a “first” this week with the introduction of “free-range cream” across some of its own-label range. Rachel Aldridge, dairy buyer for Waitrose said: “Having successfully launched free-range milk a couple of years ago we knew that we could, and should, challenge ourselves to expand the offering to free-range cream.”
What is a free-range cow, though? It depends who you ask. According to Waitrose it is one that spends at least half the year grazing outside (in other words, 183 days or more). Free-range dairy was a bit of thing circa 2017. Consumer interest in animal welfare remains high – among the most important attributes when people buy livestock products, according to a study published this summer. This has been the case for years (see this 2015 study by Mintel), but stories of megafarms and cows kept indoors all year round have led to some brands smelling an opportunity here.
But you have to be careful what you claim. The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) has just upheld a complaint against Ireland’s National Dairy Council (NDC) for greenwashing in a recent advert. The TV ad featured a female rugby player speaking about Irish grass and dairy that the authority said fell foul of advertising rules because the claim of “sustainably produced milk” lacked substantiation.
“The Committee were aware that sustainability involved more than just environmental issues, and while they noted the steps taken by Irish dairy farmers to be more sustainable, the advertisement had included an absolute claim that milk was ‘sustainably produced’,” the ruling reads. “In the absence of a qualification or evidence for the claim, the Committee considered the claim was in breach of Sections 4.1, 4.4, 4.9, 4.10, 15.2, 15.5 and 15.6 of the Code.”
The dairy industry is clearly a bit miffed by the complaints that keep coming in about its ads (this is the second misleading ad in the past 12 months, reported Plant-Based News, with another ad using a 13-year-old study to support claims around the low carbon footprint of Irish dairy).
“Sometimes […] it feels as if more attention is paid to how we describe our efforts, rather than to what we’re actually doing,” said Mark Keller, interim CEO of the National Dairy Council, earlier this summer. “Technically, the Irish dairy production system is not wholly sustainable – alongside most other industrial sectors – but our farmer’s efforts to improve environmental performance while delivering consistently high-quality food should be applauded, not glibly dismissed as ‘greenwashing’.”
Our other stories this week: the new £35m centre for alternative proteins; a grant to complete research into the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss on the brewing sector; and studying the footprint of cows.
