How do your food choices affect your business’s carbon footprint?
Big Zero Show speaker and Group Product Sustainability Senior Manager at Hilton Foods, Tom Maidment says that food accounts for a large part of a business’s emissions.
According to United Nations, food production and consumption accounts for one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions.
The National Food Strategy, an independent study commissioned by the UK Government, published in 2021 said: ‘The global food system is the single biggest contributor to biodiversity loss, deforestation, drought, freshwater pollution and the collapse of aquatic wildlife.
‘Food is the second-biggest contributor to climate change, after the energy industry.’
Tom said: ‘What we eat is a decision we all make three times a day and it is probably one of the most consequential and regular decisions we can make around our carbon footprint.
‘But food has been neglected historically when thinking about emissions because you can’t see the emissions. When you go look at a power station, you can see the chimney producing enormous amounts of emissions.
‘Whereas the methane emissions from a cow or an underwater aquatic system are a lot harder to see and tackle. So we have, for good reasons, tackled the big and easy low hanging fruit of energy and now we’re looking at agriculture.’
Find out more about how you can reduce your carbon footprint at the Big Zero Show, register below.
